Set Dame Margaret on to the finance sharks

BY RICHARD LONG

OPINION: Shakespeare was one of the first to propose the ''kill all the lawyers'' solution.

His character Butcher Dick suggests this to populist mob leader Jack Cade in Henry VI. Cade, already promising cheap beer and bread once he takes the Crown, was enthusiastic.

Cade and Dick came to a sticky end before they could institute their final-solution legal reforms, but variations on the theme were tried by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

Now there is a baying for the blood of crooked lawyers here following a report into the rorting of the legal aid system. Dame Margaret Bazley pulled no punches with her findings, although Law Society spokesmen professed to be incredulous and maintained there was no evidence.

What really would we expect from the learned colleagues?

As Will Rogers once noted, the way to make crime pay was to become a lawyer. Lawyer jokes are rife. Patrick Murray commented that a lawyer would do anything to win a case - sometimes even tell the truth.

And Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, no mean jurist himself, observed that his colleagues spent a great deal of time shovelling smoke.

I was reminded of Cary Grant's ''divorce is a game played by lawyers'' when my Wellington cab driver pointed to a large new Beamer owned by my neighbour, and said: ''I paid for that.'' In response to my inevitable query he
replied laconically: ''He handled my divorce.''

The lawyers' trade union is matched only by the MPs' trade union in terms of self-protection. Both need to be brought down to earth in these straitened times. The no-nonsense Dame Margaret, a former psychiatric nurse, is just the person to be assigned the task.

Lawyers - and judges for that matter - must be aware of, or suspect, the rorts which she uncovered in the legal aid system.

But the code of omerta applies. Lawyers do not unload on their colleagues.

Among Dame Margaret's findings are that defendants collude with lawyers, to their mutual benefit, to delay proceedings. The lawyer benefits in terms of continuing fees while the lengthened time on remand is deducted from the defendant's sentence.

Another trick is to dismiss the legal aid lawyer at the final stage, meaning a restart, with a new lawyer, with the taxpayer-funded meter continuing to tick and the snarled court system being further delayed.

None of this is surprising of course, and much the same problem applies across the broad spectrum of well-meaning social welfare programmes. For example ACC, brought in with the best of intentions and aimed at assisting the simple rehabilitation of the injured, has strayed well beyond initial intentions, at vast cost, because wet politicians have insisted on tacking on additional handouts.

In the same way, social welfare, and especially the soaring sickness and invalids benefits, has become a way of life for many because it is easy and available. Doctors, rather than lawyers, are to blame for much of this as it is easier for them to apply their own omerta and sign the requisite forms.

The trouble is that the bloated welfare state, with its Working for Families and interest-free student loans, is now unaffordable, especially if we are to have any hope of catching Australia, and it is hampering initiative, investment and growth.

As for the indomitable Dame Margaret, now that she has outed the crooks in the legal aid system, how about unleashing her nononsense approach on to the sharks of the finance world?

While the many thousands of mum and dad investors who lost life savings in the finance house crashes will have derived some comfort from Bridgecorp's Rod Petricevic being roughed up in a St Heliers bar recently, and from Hanover's Mark Hotchin being embarrassed by a Hell Pizza ''Greed'' billboard outside his home, in most cases action to unravel these financial nightmares is proceeding at a glacial pace.

We need a Dame Margaret to ride shotgun on this, to limit the amount that these directors continue to pay themselves and their legal advisers while investors and shareholders languish.

As Henry Bougham said: ''A lawyer is a learned gentleman who rescues your estate from your enemies and keeps it to himself.''

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