Labor’s civil justice law risks more complexity and cost

Proposed civil justice legislation announced today by the Attorney-General risks adding yet more rules and procedures that will give even more scope for clever lawyers to help clients avoid responsibility, Shadow Attorney-General Robert Clark said today.

“The Coalition will await the detail of the legislation, but based on the Attorney-General’s past record Victorians have no grounds to trust him to make the legal system cheaper and more efficient,” Mr Clark said.

“For example, the Attorney-General promised in 2004 that his so-called legal profession reforms would reduce costs and make lawyers more accountable, but instead the 591-page Legal Profession Act has made it harder rather than easier for people to get justice if they are ripped off by a lawyer.

“The Coalition is particularly concerned at suggestions that Labor’s new laws might require every case to go through a new compulsory pre-trial conference before it can be heard, which would increase costs and delays in many cases.

“It should be the courts that decide whether a case goes to a pre-trial conference, not the Attorney-General.

“As the Chief Justice, Marilyn Warren, said in a speech to the Victorian Commercial Bar Association last month: ‘Ultimately, pre-action protocols and their application is a matter that should be left to the courts and court rules made by the judges. In political circles there is a temptation, often, to do all things novel…Ultimately, some matters must go to court. That is the time when the state is obliged to provide the facility for modern commercial litigation’ .

“The Attorney-General is kidding himself if he thinks this legislation will transform Victoria into the nation’s dispute resolution hub.

“Unless the Attorney-General ensures that courts can operate in efficient courtrooms with modern technology instead of the Supreme Court’s current cold and impractical labyrinth, cases will keep leaving Victoria.

“Not only has Labor taken more than two years to respond to the Law Reform Commission’s Civil Justice Review Report, but in typical Labor style the Attorney-General is trying to blame others for court delays when he has been responsible for huge delays and cost blowouts in court technology upgrades.

“The Auditor-General last year found Labor’s Integrated Courts Management System project was 36 per cent over budget, more than a year late and did not deliver the benefits it was supposed to.

“While there are many reforms that can and should be made to improve civil litigation, the Attorney-General’s renewed attacks on the legal profession are based on 20-year-old stereotypes and show he is out of touch with the issues of modern litigation,” Mr Clark said.