This time, another boy scales the legal heights

David Collins

The appointment of the Solicitor General this week has a degree of sensitivity attached to it that was not present at the last appointment, in 2000, when the main issue of contention was whether it would be a woman, thus completing a female triumvirate alongside Chief Justice Sian Elias and Attorney-General Margaret Wilson.

Such was the speculation that when the name was finally known, one newspaper headlined the announcement: "It's a boy." This time around, it's a "boy" again, Dr David Collins, QC, a Wellington barrister.

After a rigorous selection process run for the first time by the State Services Commission, he replaces Terence Arnold, the 2000 "boy", who has moved to the Court of Appeal.

The sensitivity this time around is political. National's Murray McCully shattered the tradition of MPs not attacking such figures and vilified Arnold in an ongoing campaign against decisions McCully claimed were motivated to help the "sisterhood" in the Government.

Even before Collins starts there is a "we're watching" attitude in National and whispers that he is too close to Labour.

Collins says: "I certainly do not feel vulnerable and I don't think the office is vulnerable. I, as have all my predecessors, will discharge the responsibilities in a way that means that we cannot be accused of any political biases in any way whatsoever."

Yes, he does know Prime Minister Helen Clark, he says - among others from all quarters of the political spectrum. "It is not possible to discharge your responsibilities in New Zealand without having contact with political personnel." Clark offers the snippet that a few years ago they were once in the same group of skiers.

Although McCully is being circumspect, there is a a barb: "I think you are obliged to reserve judgment when someone is appointed to that role but you do so with a deep sense of unease, given the associations with people on the Labour side of politics. You will always be pleased to have your fears proven unfounded."

Collins is a respected litigator with a varied array of cases behind him, many high-profile but some that could be described more as causes.

It was Collins who argued the case for the Pou family, unsuccessfully, against British American Tobacco over the death of Invercargill woman Janice Pou. He argued before Parliament's privileges committee for the Alliance in 1997 when it sought to have MP Alamein Kopu deemed to have resigned from Parliament when she resigned from the Alliance.

He has not always been on the PC side - he represented professors Green and Bonham in the Cartwright cervical cancer inquiry. He has also been involved in some Treaty of Waitangi fisheries settlement litigation.

Collins says that although he has not had a large number of commercial cases he is not without some weighty commercial experience. He is on the ACC investment committee, which handles $7.2 billion in investments, and "you have to understand a lot about the commercial realities of life in order to discharge your responsibilities in that role".

The legal community is more interested in who was the competition and whether Collins has the intellectual grunt and advocacy skills to be the Government's chief legal adviser.

The field included Jack Hodder of Chapman Tripp, who withdrew, and QC Kristy McDonald. Deputy Solicitor General Cheryl Gwyn and QC Brendan Brown may have applied.

Collins is top of his field in legal medical issues and has been an accomplished litigator and QC since 2000. He has been chairman of the Accident Compensation Corporation since 2004, and is chairman of the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal.

The most frequent words used to describe him are "decent" and "humane". Friend Andrew Ladley, director of the Victoria University's Institute of Policy Studies, says: "In my view he doesn't take either himself or the world desperately seriously and you need a sense of humour in that job."

Until two years ago, Collins was a climber. He has scaled, among other peaks, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mt Aconcagua in Argentina and Mt McKinley in Alaska, where he had severe frostbite. Did he lose anything? "No, I am physically perfectly intact."

Collins was born in Hokitika. His father was with the Forest Service and his mother "primarily discharged the responsibilities of being a mother at the time" - lawyer talk for housewife.

He moved briefly to Te Kuiti, then Wainuiomata where a teacher and former lawyer encouraged him to take an interest in law. He studied law at Victoria University, which in 1993, awarded him the rare honour of a doctorate in law for his book Medical law in New Zealand."

Now at 52, he is Solicitor General. "It is the ultimate lawyer's post," says Chris Finlayson, former barrister and National's shadow Attorney-General. "If you're a lawyer's lawyer, you're a pig in swill when it comes to the Solicitor General's job." Finlayson has griped that he was not consulted by Attorney-General Michael Cullen about the Solicitor General's appointment, but he is highly complimentary about his former contracts tutor at Victoria University whom he has known for 30 years.

"I have appeared in court with him. I have appeared in court against him and I've always found him a fine opponent and a fine colleague at the bar."

What is clear is that Finlayson, fresh from the independent bar himself, has lost none of the fraternal loyalty associated with its membership, and that if he were National's Attorney-General in a change of Government, would be happy to work with the new Solicitor General.

McCully's attacks against the former Solicitor General coincided with an unusually high number of politically related cases in recent years being referred to the police.

Many, but not all, were referred to Crown Law for an opinion on whether to proceed with prosecution, the Solicitor General being the chief executive of the army of lawyers in Crown Law.

There are also the equally politically charged cases that don't directly involve MPs, on which the Government seeks expert advice, such as the Foreshore and Seabed judgment and the Ahmed Zaoui case.

Perhaps the greatest protection for Collins from any political attack is the extraordinary appointments procedure he underwent, including psychometric testing - a far cry from the day the days when people were shoulder-tapped.

The Solicitor General's job is not an appointment that falls within the statutory realm of the State Services Commission. But, increasingly, the Government has asked SSC to handle such posts, including that of Police Commissioner and Armed Forces appointments.

Collins calls it "quite an amazing process". First, the job was advertised. "The application was very detailed and then those who were short-listed went through an intensive assessment that involved cognitive screening, assessment by two very experienced psychologists.

"In my case they interviewed me for something in the vicinity of an hour or an hour and a half then put me through further evaluations.

"Then those who were short-listed were interviewed by a very experienced interview panel (State Services Commissioner Mark Prebble, former High Court Judge Sir John Jeffries, QC Mary Scholtens, and Secretary for Justice Belinda Clark) and then after that those who went on to the next stage were subject to SIS scrutiny.

"Meantime, most of the Supreme Court and a number of other judges had been spoken to, and others, and then it went to Cabinet and ultimately the Governor-General was asked to sign it off."

"By any objective analysis, it would be described as a very, very thorough and objective assessment."

The Job

* The Solicitor General is the chief legal adviser to the Government, its chief advocate in court and the chief executive of the Crown Law Office, the Government's law firm.

* He is responsible for the prosecution of indictable crime and his office works closely with police prosecutors and other Government departments needing legal advice.

* The Solicitor General works very closely with the Attorney-General, the head of the justice system, but if there are differences, the Attorney-General's view prevails.

* The Solicitor General is paid between $349,000 and $400,000.