Page 1872 - Week 05 - Thursday, 16 May 2019
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Clauses 467 to 481, by leave, taken together and agreed to.
Clause 482.
MR COE (Yerrabi—Leader of the Opposition) (5.07): I move amendment No 87 circulated in my name [see schedule 1 at page 1901]. The amendment that I am proposing seeks to change the billing so that it is consistent with the duty provisions in New South Wales. It is quite straightforward. But, again, I do not expect the Greens to support it. I want to flag that we have circulated amendments Nos 88 to 104 and put a lot of work into them, as you can imagine. However, those amendments are all consequential to amendments that have not been successful: Nos 1 to 86. Therefore we have no intention of moving them, so we will not. I want to put on the record that we support all these amendments but it is clear that they are not going to get up and, given what has already transpired, are of little relevance.
MR BARR (Kurrajong—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Social Inclusion and Equality, Minister for Tourism and Special Events and Minister for Trade, Industry and Investment) (5.08): We oppose this amendment. Claims-harvesting practices are of concern in Australian jurisdictions and overseas and require a robust response. Without an offence, there is insufficient consequence to the requirement that referral fees not be paid.
This clause assists in deterring claims-farming practices that involve members of the public receiving cold calls or social media prompts seeking personal details regarding possible involvement in motor vehicle accidents. If the amendment were to go through, this clause could be easily circumvented through the payment of referral fees to a related entity such as a trust or a private company controlled by a lawyer or close associate of a lawyer. For those very sound reasons, we will not be supporting this amendment.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (5.09): The Greens also will not support this amendment. The amendment will substitute a new way for managing referral fees. The original section has an offence and penalty to prevent lawyers referring defined benefit applications or damages claims for legal representation. Lawyers cannot give or receive consideration. However, the Liberals’ amendment removes the offence, thus, I suppose, leaving this issue to be self-regulated through professional conduct rules.
Again, the Liberal Party appears to be opposing a reasonable thing potentially just to help the legal profession, although I would have to hope that in this instance it would not help the legal profession because it is clearly not something that you would think ethical lawyers would be doing. However, any help provided is potentially at the expense of the people the scheme is supposed to benefit, which is the injured people.
It is somewhat beyond me why the Liberal Party wants to remove these provisions that protect the integrity of the scheme. I just do not understand why. The Greens believe that it is reasonable that there be an offence to help protect the integrity of the system and to ensure that claims farming offences do not occur.
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