Page 1176 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 May 2006
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Facilitating legal practice across state and territory boundaries will be a continuing project.
The result of the collaborative effort is a bill that not only removes barriers to lawyers practising across state and territory borders, but also implements a national model in the context of our local legal and professional environment. Under the bill a legal practitioner admitted in the ACT will now be able to practise in any Australian jurisdiction without the need to also be admitted in that jurisdiction. A client in the ACT will have very much the same rights and remedies as a client in Victoria, or indeed in any other Australian jurisdiction. Disciplinary action taken against a practitioner in the ACT may now be enforced in any other Australian state or territory.
Under this legislation, ACT barristers will now be granted a practising certificate and will generally be subject to its provisions about insurance and compliance. Barristers will, however, be subject to some specific provisions, and excepted from the operation of others, because of the differing nature of the services they provide and the manner in which the advocates’ arm of the legal profession operates. For example, barristers will not receive or manage trust money or trust property.
In line with the agreement between states and territories, this bill is set to commence on 1 July 2006. Regulatory and other authorities affected by the amendments have been working steadfastly to establish the new processes and procedures that will be required. Most importantly, they require certainty about the legal requirements for the granting and renewal of practising certificates and about insurance requirements from 1 July 2006.
There are, however, some exceptions to the proposed commencement date. To allow the profession to make ready for some of the more complex operational requirements, the provisions relating to management of trust money and property will commence on 1 April 2007. The provisions relating to disclosure of costs to clients will commence on 1 January 2007. Leading up to these dates, the professional groups will be engaged in training their members and developing procedures and formal instruments.
I will not attempt at this time to go through the detail of this very long bill. The following may, however, help to simplify or clarify members’ consideration of its content. Members should be aware that the bill is based almost entirely on model provisions of three types. Firstly, core uniform core provisions are to be adopted in each state and territory using the same wording, as far as practicable. Secondly, core non-uniform core provisions are to be adopted in each state and territory, but the wording of the model provisions need not be adopted. Thirdly, non-core provisions will allow the states and territories to choose the extent to which they will adopt or omit these provisions.
Because all jurisdictions are obliged to incorporate core provisions, implementation of this legislation will bring a new, high level of consistency across Australia in legislation regulating the legal profession. About 330 of more than 600 provisions in the bill have some level of core status and are therefore, to some degree, mandatory. The majority of non-core provisions re-enact sections in the existing act.
Chapter 1 contains machinery provisions for commencement and application of the Criminal Code, definitions and other interpretative provisions. There are some changes
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