Mr Collinge is also a successful commercial lawyer and the first to open a specialist commercial law practice in Queen Street, Auckland in 1972 particularly in contract, competition and consumer law. Simultaneously, he took an active role as organiser of the Advanced Business Law Group for the Law Society [page 267]. Described as an ‘eminent lawyer’ [eg page 57], he has contributed significantly to the law –as a legal author; as a decision maker and contributor to legislation and practice; and in the harmonisation of business laws between Australia and New Zealand. Considering each in turn:
(a)Legal Authorship: He has many published papers (in legal Journals) [see eg pages 278-279], but his four major texts are:
(i)‘The Law Relating to the Controlof Competition in New Zealand’(Sweet & Maxwell, Wellington, 1969) which analyses the provisions of New Zealand’s Trade Practices Act 1958 and related law. It is described by Prof Val Korah in the Modern Law Review (UK) as ‘an important work’.
(ii)‘The Law Relating to Restrictive Trade Practices and Monopolies Mergers and Takeovers in New Zealand ’(Butterworths, Wellington, 1982) which won the NZ Legal Research Foundation’s prize for the Best Publication in 1984, and was then the standard text on the subject.
(iii)‘The Law of Marketing in Australia and New Zealand’(Thesaurus Press, Melbourne, 1971), described by the Australian Financial Review as ‘path breaking’ [page 259]. This discusses the varying laws of the six Australian States and New Zealand on the basis that these legal jurisdictions collectively formed a natural single market [page 259] –a view later enshrined (post 1983) by Treaty in ANZCERTA, the TTMRA and the Single Economic Market (SEM).
(iv)‘Tutorials in Contract’(Law Book Co, Sydney, fourth edition, 1986) based on his teaching material as Senior Lecturer at Melbourne University -designed to encourage Socratic teaching in that subject.
(b)Commerce Commission Decisions: Although he never sought higher legal or judicial office, Mr Collinge had a quasi judicial role as Chairman of the Commerce Commission and some 200 formal decisions of the Commission to his credit. Whereas the Courts had previously declined to become involved in decisions on business judgments and on matters of broad policy (these being regarded as non-justiciable), the ground breaking jurisdiction of the Commerce Act required direct judicial involvement in these matters and hence a multidisciplinary approach (eg involving business, law, economics, accounting and policy) –for whichMr Collinge’sacademic and practical backgrounds were admirably suited. This now involved business and policy judgments -issues such as whether, in relation to business conduct and mergers, there were sufficient barriers to market entry so as to significantly preclude competition or potential competitors from the relevant markets; and whether the ‘public interest’ benefits to the public or sectors of the public from significant market concentration on balance outweighed the anti competitive detriments arising therefrom. Further, determining ‘competition’ and ‘public interest’ involved many new legal issues (such as market definition, contestability, barriers to entry, potential competition, vertical integration, cross directorships, bare transfers of monopoly power, benefit and detriment, etc) and the development of new procedures for informality, transparency and confidentiality consistent with natural justice (eg draft determinations, advance clearances, information exchange, letters of comfort and confidentiality orders). The decisions of the Commission and its practice at this time on such matters under Mr Collinge contributed significantly to the development of the subject [eg pages 94-95, 8-99].
(c)Harmonisation under ANZCERTA: His ‘The Law of Marketing in Australia and NewZealand’, which was unique, highlighted the lack of uniformity of laws relating to a wide variety of commercial activities affecting marketing and consumers in the various States of Australia and New Zealand [page 259]. This contributed to the progress towards harmonisation of business law between the States and the two countries. Upon the advent of ANZCERTA Mr Collinge was from 1983 a member of and contributed to the Business Law and Liaison Group in relation to harmonisation issues –and was often called upon for his advice [eg page 266]. The principles and issues underlying harmonisation generally are reflected in a paper he presented to the NZ Law Society Conference in 1887 entitled ‘The Harmonisation of Commercial Law in Australiaand New Zealand’. This covered many and wide ranging commercial areas, along with an explanation of the measures adopted by the Commerce Commission towards harmonisation of competition law [see pages 101-102, 260-265]. In recognition of the latter, the Memorandum of Understanding between the Governments of Australia and New Zealand on the Harmonisation of Business Law of 1988 records that ‘New Zealand and Australia have already achieved a significant degree of harmonisation and co-operation in...laws administered by the Commerce Commission in NZ and the Trade Practices Commission in Australia’, this ‘first experience’ showing the way in relation to harmonisation of commercial law generally [page 260].
Given this contribution to the law, it is not surprising that Mr Collinge established good relations with the Law Lords in Britain, assisted by the co-operation of Lord Cooke [page 211] and the fact that Lord Hoffman had been a law tutor at University College, Oxford while he was a student there. As Lord Goff said of Mr Collinge on behalf of the Law Lords (who were at the time the top New Zealand Court) –‘you have established such excellent relations with the legal fraternity and especially the Law Lords in their capacity as members of the Privy Council’ [page187].