FIJI still has a dearth of specialist legislative draftspeople, which poses a constraint in the review and amendment of outdated legislation.
Attorney-General Graham Leung said at present, there was no specific time-line given to his office regarding the review of legislation approved by Cabinet.
“I think the Attorney-General’s Office has a list of at least 40 laws that are under consideration for either review or for amendment and as you can imagine, that’s quite a very, very long list,” he told the media yesterday.
“That particular review of the Police Act, of course, is timely. You will recognise and understand that many of our laws were enacted before Fiji became independent in 1970. We inherited a lot of colonial statutes, and we’re going back now 50 years.
“So obviously, circumstances change, communities change, societies change, and all laws in all countries go through a process of reviewing their laws on an ongoing basis.
“But for us, with respect to law reform and legal drafting, one of the constraints has always been one of capacity. I think we’ve got maybe two senior drafters and a couple of younger drafters. So it’s a big exercise. It’s a complex exercise.”
He said a lot of the laws were interconnected and not every lawyer could be a legislative draft person.
Mr Leung said similar to medical specialists, there were specialists in law.
“Not every lawyer is either trained to be a draft person or qualified to be a draft person, so the experience that we are facing with a shortage of legal draft persons is not confined to Fiji. It’s a global problem.
“Every country you go to, they are short of legal draft persons. So as I mentioned, I’ve got a long list of laws that have been identified by Cabinet that need review the writing in some cases.”
