Vic rapped on attitude to e-system

Les Taylor is still confident that a national system of electronic conveyancing will be achieved, writes Legal affairs editor Chris Merritt | November 02, 2007

THE organisation charged with developing a national electronic conveyancing system has accused Victoria of trying to "torpedo" the new system.

Les Taylor, who chairs the organisation known as the National Electronic Conveyancing System, said Victoria was trying to replace the planned national system with a network of state-based systems.

In an interview with The Australian, Mr Taylor has delivered a withering attack on Victoria's behaviour during negotiations aimed at establishing a national conveyancing system.

"I liken this very much to the problems incurred in the 1800s with different railway gauges," he said.

He was still confident that a national system of electronic conveyancing would be achieved, but he accused Victoria of reneging on an agreement to help build the system.

Instead, he said Victoria was trying to impose a federation of state-based systems that lack the support of banks and lawyers.

Mr Taylor, who is a former general counsel for the Commonwealth Bank, had reneged on its promise to hand over all the intellectual property underpinning its own electronic conveyancing system, known as ECV.

Mr Taylor, who is now overseas, made his criticism of Victoria before talks this week aimed at clearing the way for the establishment of a national e-conveyancing system.

As part of those talks, an agreement has been made on preconditions that Victoria had been insisting on before making available source codes for the software underpinning its e-conveyancing system.

Mr Taylor said Victoria had agreed in June at a meeting of the NECS steering committee to hand over those source codes so the system could be assessed by NSW officials.

Victorian officials had agreed to hand over the codes so NSW "could do a proper evaluation in order to determine what changes would be necessary if the Victorian model was used as a basis for an electronic system in NSW, and then Australia-wide".

A spokeswoman for Gavin Jennings, the minister responsible for e-conveyancing in Victoria, said the states were continuing to work on delivering "a nationally consistent system, as has been the objective for several years".

Victoria and Queensland believed the national e-conveyancing project was on track, the spokeswoman said.

Mr Taylor said the Queensland Government had endorsed a national model of e-conveyancing in June but now "seems to have joined forces with Victoria in an attempt to torpedo the national project and impose a federated model".

Mr Taylor said the Law Council and the state law societies had taken the same stance as the banks and wanted a seamless electronic conveyancing system covering the nation, rather than eight separate systems.

He said an external review of the Victorian system had been conducted last year for the NECS steering committee.

"It concluded that the Victorian system was not really capable of being transferred and incorporated into a national system," Mr Taylor said.

But he said this assessment was limited because Victoria had again refused to hand over source codes and other intellectual property associated with the ECV system.