Finlayson slaps down Law society

Chris Finlayson released:

Attorney-General Christopher Finlayson QC today expressed his disappointment at the lack of rigour shown by the Law Society in its recent press release criticising provisions of the Health and Safety Reform Bill.

“Law Society President Chris Moore claimed that Schedule 2A of the Health and Safety Reform Bill would allow a person to be tried of a criminal offence without seeing all the information relied on by the Crown and without the right to be present (or to have their representative present) during all the proceedings. This is wrong,” Mr Finlayson said.

“The Law Society appears to have been commenting on an old version of the bill and to have ignored, or simply missed, Supplementary Order Paper 108 which amended Schedule 2A seven days before their press release.

That’s shabby work from any lobby group, let alone the NZ Law Society. They generated a day of stories based on an old version of a bill.

“The Law Society plays an important role in contributing to the quality of legislation passed by Parliament,” said Mr Finlayson. “But in order for Parliament to benefit from that contribution, accuracy really is paramount, especially when the Law Society chooses to comment on legislation via press release.”

If I was a lawyer, I’d be asking my society when they chose to embarrass the profession in such a way.