Difficult to determine costs: Kua

 FORMER Justice Minister Kerenga Kua says the Government cannot say at any given time how much it owes in legal costs and damages, which is not good for financial planning.

Kua, the Sinasina-Yongomugl MP, told a Commission of Inquiry looking into the processes and procedures of payments to law firms by the State, that in the absence of such information, “I was not prepared to incur further liabilities to the State in legal cost and maintained that most matters were handled internally by the Solicitor-General and the State Solicitor”.

“This position was taken knowing that I was placing a risk on the State owing to the overstretched resources and limited skills available to the Solicitor-General and State Solicitor.”

Kua was Attorney-General and Justice Minister until replaced earlier this year by Prime Minister Peter O’Neill. He said he had done his best to minimise external brief-outs during his18-month stint.

He said after realising some ministers and department heads were briefing out their own lawyers directly instead of going through the Attorney-General, he took out a paid advertisement objecting to that.

“A lot of these ministers and department heads did not fully understand the nature of the legal issues nor the competency levels of their preferred lawyers,” Kua said.