Banks - the Blob

A spokesperson for BankWest estimated 80% of the issues between lawyers dealing with Financial Institutions is colloquially caused by

• fax heaven or hell
  
• the Blob
  
• the Black Hole
  

Where faxes with important messages and copy documents just disappear, vamoosh, never to be seen again, to re-appear another day perhaps, where do they go?, maybe .........



BankWest recognises the long term goal is the Electronic Mortgage and Loan Documentation and to achieve this the Blob has to go.

I just thought I might share this with you.

Slow take-up hobbles electronic conveyancing

The Victorian government has hatched a plan to entice users to its troubled electronic conveyancing (EC) project by offering a $500 rebate on conveyancing fees, but there are a few catches.

To qualify, the buyer and seller will in effect be compelled to use the same firm of solicitors and have just two choices of finance, and one would-be user has been asked to come back in a few months.

After seven years of development at a cost of $30 million, Victoria’s EC system – which allows property transfers to be conducted on the internet – will soon enter its second month of operations.

But so far the sole subscribers consist of a suburban law firm, Rennick & Gaynor, and two finance providers; Bendigo Bank and mecu credit union. The state government-owned developer VicUrban is also a subscriber. This means that to use the new system and to qualify for the rebate, the buyer and seller will need to retain lawyers Rennick and will need to have any mortgages arranged through Bendigo or Mecu.

Meanwhile, the state government is harvesting higher fees for paper transactions, which were jacked up in November by an average $30 a conveyance to make EC comparatively cheaper, and EC has been putting off customers.

Melbourne lawyer Brett Hayton, of Hayton Kosky, said his request to subscribe was met with a suggestion that he come back in February.
“It was fantastic that Victoria took steps to go forward with this project. I’m happy to become a user and to provide feedback, and I went to sign up – but you can’t.”
Mr Hayton said he was passed between three employees of Land Victoria over two weeks before being told to come back in February. In the meantime his clients are paying an estimated extra $30 to $50 in government fees for transactions using the old paper system.
“Electronic conveyancing has not lowered the costs of conveyancing. In fact it’s put them up,” he said.

A spokesman for Victorian Environment Minister Gavin Jennings said the incident was a misunderstanding, and lawyers and conveyancers have been able to subscribe since the November 16 launch. Ten have applied and 16 online transactions are in the pipeline.
The $500 rebate is Victoria’s latest bid to entice financial institutions to co-operate with the project. Their participation is essential as they write the bulk of mortgages.

But they have refused to sign on due to infighting between the other states over whether Victoria’s EC software can be turned into a national system. Eight months of meetings, a communiqué signed by state and territory land ministers and interventions by the federal attorneys-general have so far failed to resolve the impasse.
Members of the national steering committee will meet again in Melbourne today.

AFR | Matt Drummond | 14 Dec 2007

UK Land Registry focuses on electronic mortgages and transfers

UK has made the sensible decision to focus first on electronic registration of dealings (2008) before embracing the more complex electronic settlements and funds transfer (2009).

This is the press release lifted from a finance website

Key learning from Land Registry's Chain Matrix prototype and valuable feedback from customers on electronic funds transfer have influenced Land Registry's decision to focus resource on introducing electronic discharges, charges (mortgages) and transfers as the priorities in its e-conveyancing programme.

This will include refreshing the existing product range and enhancing its web services to better serve the needs of its customers.

Head of Land Registry's Business Transformation Programme, Alasdair Lewis, said: "We have always recognised that we would move incrementally towards our long-term vision of e-conveyancing. We have already done much in-depth work with customers, testing the market, and our first priority must now be to introduce electronic discharges, charges and transfers - thus fully automating our core business of registering land.

"We recognise that this is a significant task and that it will not happen overnight. Therefore, in 2008, we will focus on delivery of electronic charges and electronic discharges, and pave the way for electronic transfers in 2009. We have concluded that these must be our next key steps.

"From the outset, we have been committed to enhancing chain transparency and to enabling full e-conveyancing through the electronic transfer of funds. Our Chain Matrix prototype is testimony to this commitment and we have learned much from the exercise.

The Great Stamp Duty Ripoff

VICTORIAN Treasurer John Lenders has promised to consider tax relief and housing affordability for the May budget after booming stamp duty, GST and payroll revenues plumped up the expected budget surplus by more than half a billion dollars.

State Treasury now believes the budget will be in surplus by $842 million this financial year — a hefty $518 million more than its budget prediction seven months ago.

Tax revenue is likely to jump to $12.56 billion, almost $1 billion more than the $11.59 billion predicted at budget time. Stamp duty collections are expected to leap to a record $3.55 billion in 2007-08, compared to $2.85 billion tipped in the budget, while payroll tax predictions have been revised from $3.60 billion to $3.75 billion.

Source the age

Property vs Securities Trading

For electronic conveyancing, the focus and attention has been on government electronic conveyancing initiatives. The blame game for quite a while has been a politically driven one, vis a vis the parochial nature of one state vs another. You end up with a situation where lawyers (as a collective) and the banks as an industry can (quite wrongly in my view) point the finger at and blame the state governments. It is quite convenient.

Analytically, you need to look at the conveyancing cycle to get a better understanding of the business. Then you can apportion the blame.

First lets look at share trading. It has been electronic for close on 20 years. There are very similar parallels with the property and mortgage business. In share trading there are three distinct phases in a conducting a share trade

1. the contract. share trading is all screen trading and the bid / offer systems is conducted by the ASX via SEATS - and can be accessed by brokers and the public alike.
   
2. the financial settlement. this is conducted by CHESS (part of the ASX and stands for Clearing House Electronic Subregister System). Brokers operate client accounts and brokers settle the money side of things (T3 or T1) for transfer of client funds.
   
3. registration. this is maintained by companies like Computershare, Perpetual, LINK on behalf of the public companies you and I invest in.
   

There is not one single distinct system that controls the industry. Ditto for futures trading and securities trading of bills and bonds.

These industries are turbo-charged. With the above, you ask yourself where is the paper?

Within Australia, where are the stand out changes in the property and mortgage industry? You have to look and segment the market and look at who is responsible for which part

1. the Contract.

This can be broken down into several parts
1.1 the market place which determines the price, and this is ruled by -

1.1.1 the electronic market place - web sites like realestate.com.au rule
1.1.2 estate agents still play a role like brokers do in some share trading but not at all times

In the future we will see properties traded online with a bid / offer auction system.

1.2 the legal side of the contract -

1.2.1 rules of vendor disclosure
1.2.2 the Contract of Offer and Acceptance
1.2.3 digital signatures

This is the space where companies like 247legal.com.au play a role. Where all the parts of the contract described in 1.2 can be conducted digitally, online in a collaborative fashion. We are close to finishing the development on incorporating (simple) digital signature technology into the system currently under development.

2. the Mortgage

This is the world ruled by Financial Institutions, mortgage brokers, credit agencies, valuers, mortgage insurers, lawyers and conveyancers. There are several steps in the mortgage chain which start at loan application and progress through approval, loan offer, security, settlement, registration, funding, securitisation, servicing and discharge. In the world of open and collaborative systems, the lending industry has made progress but this has been constrained to the mortgage broking industry. The truth is the banking systems are closed and introspective. They are inefficient and inelastic.

From the perspective of the interface with the government's electronic conveyancing systems the following rules

2.1 Loan Approval
2.2 Loan Contract
2.3 Security
2.4 Settlement
2.5 Registration

The government's electronic conveyancing proposal affects only 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5, but and the only but is, it must be national and it must be compulsory (or re-think the current approach of all parties must be party to the transaction)

Again, looking at the blame game, the government is not responsible for the earlier parts. The banks and the lawyers must devise and adopt open systems to deal with loan approval, loan contracts and security in innovative ways. And because governments have made a hash of developing national electronic settlement systems, private enterprise needs to step in and provide alternate solutions. We must stop blaming the government. Banks need to start adopting smart technology, smarter systems which allows lawyers and other suppliers to interact with their systems. They are doing this with mortgage brokers but I can attest that progress on any other front is non existent or at least not apparent.

3. Registration

Well not a lot needs to be said here that has not already been said. Governments have monopolies on this. National initiatives are imperative. Nirvana would be a single national property register.

Signatures on Electronic Documents

Article by Alan Davidson 2004

Alan Davidson is a senior law lecturer with the TC Beirne School of Law at the University of Queensland. Email him at a.davidson@law.uq.edu.au or visit his website at www.uq.edu.au/davidson/

Reprint of his excellent article.

Placing your name at the end of an email or electronic document has a number of implications that we should all be aware of . . .

Typing your name at the end of a paper document has been held to be a signature. So, should typing your name at the end of an email be similarly regarded as a signature with all the corresponding legal ramifications?

We all know that the contents of an email can be as legally binding as the most structured language on the firm’s letter head. How ever, email is fast and cost efficient. To maintain a formal and structured approach, many firms have adopted the practice of creating formal replies in the usual way, but dispatching the entire file as an attachment to an email. The body of such an email may simply state, ‘Formal correspondence is attached’, while the ‘subject’ states the matter as usual. There are a number of advantages and pitfalls associated with such a practice.

The attachment
The attachment is typically a text file, perhaps using Microsoft Word or an equivalent. The firm’s letter head and design can be incorporated into the file. Two significant matters must be considered. First, the possibility of alteration and second the signature. Last month I considered a number of approaches to en sure documents attached to emails were authentic. This month I consider the status of a typed signature at the close of an email and on an attachment file.

Signatures
The status of a standard signature is often taken for granted. However, we all know that it is the intention behind the signature that is paramount. A signature may appear on a document, but the signor may not bound be cause he or she lacked the requisite underlying intention, raising defences such as duress, undue influence, nonest factum, unconscionability etc. Two signatures may appear side by side on a contract, but one may intend to be bound contractually while the other is a witness. The ‘signature’ may be an ‘X’ or some other mark indicating execution. Cases such as R v Moore; Ex Parte Myers (1884) 10 VLR 322 permit a printed name of a party to be sufficient. Higginbotham J stated that a “signature is only a mark” and may “be impressed upon the document by a stamp engraved with a facsimile of the ordinary signature of the person signing”. The term electronic signature does not mean a digitised signature nor a digital signature.

A digitised signature refers to graphic representation in digital form of a person’s hand writing signature. An electronic signature also includes any letters, characters, numbers or other symbols in digital form attached to or logically associated with an electronic record such as an email or attachment to an email. This could be as simple as typing your name at the end of an email. A digital signature is a specific type of secure electronic signature, sometimes referred to as a digital certificate. In R v Frolchenko (1998) QCA 43 Williams J in the Queensland Court of Appeal stated that such a electronic document could be authenticated by looking at other factors such as whether the name appears in type script at the end of the document. In the US case Doherty v Registry of Motor Vehicles (1998) Agnes J held that a police report made “by means of e-mail or some other electronic method” is regarded as signed, subjecting the reporting officer to possible perjury charges. In McGuren v Simpson [2004] NSWSC 35 (18 February 2004) the court quoted this passage from Cheshire and Fifoot’s ‘Law of Contract’ 7th edition: “The word ‘signature’ has been very loosely interpreted. A printed slip may suffice if it contains the name of the defendant. This relaxation of the statutory language is well established one hundred years ago and offers a striking in stance of the way in which legislation may be over laid by judicial precedent.” Statements to a similar effect are to be found in ‘The Laws of Australia’ 7.2 Contract ‘Vitiating Factors’ Chapter 2 Pt C Div 5 and in ‘Halsbury’s Laws of Australia’ 110 Contract ‘Formation of Con tract’ [110-1030].In McGuren v Simpson the document was a hardcopy print out of an electronic communication from the plain tiff. The court referred to Lockheed-Arabia v Owen [1993] 3 All ER 641 in which Mann LJ held that a photocopy constituted ‘writing’, adding “an ongoing statute ought to be read to accommodate technological change”. Similarly in Wilkens v Iowa Insurance Commissioner (1990) 457 NW 2d 1 (US), the court held that a requirement to maintain a written record of an insurance con tract was satisfied by the insurer storing written records on its computer system. The Law Commission for England and Wales in its paper entitled ‘Electronic Commerce: Formal requirements in Commercial Transactions – advice from the Law Commission’ ex pressed the same view. In deed the use of words by a party with out any other form of signature can be regarded alone as the writer’s signature. This has been described as the ‘authenticated signature fiction’ as discussed by the High Court in Pirie v Saunders (1961) 104 CLR 149. On this issue in ‘Halsbury’s Laws of Australia’ 110 Con tract at [110-1030], it is said: “Where the name of the party to be charged appears on the alleged note or memorandum, for example, be cause it has been typed in by the other party, the so-called ‘authenticated signature fiction’ will apply where the party to be charged expressly or impliedly acknowledges the writing as an authenticated expression of the contract so that the typed words will be deemed to be his or her signature.” In McGuren v Simpson the court commented that as McGuren’s name appeared in the email and she expressly acknowledged in the email an authenticated expression of a prior agreement, the email was “recognisable as a note of a concluded agreement”. The court concluded that both the signature alone and in conjunction with the writing could be regarded as a signature in law.

Legislation
Section 10 of the Commonwealth Electronic Transactions Act 1999 and section 14 of the Queensland ETA give legal effect to the electronic signature only after regard is given “to all the relevant circumstances when the (electronic signature) was used” and that “the method was as reliable as was appropriate for the purposes for which the information was communicated”. Unfortunately this formulation leaves open a number of possible arguments. Courts are yet to consider both the circumstances and the meaning of “as reliable appropriate”. Never the less the underlying intention of parliament is to ensure functional equivalence, by providing for validation of electronic signatures. One approach in practice can be to include a note in electronic documents that the electronic signature is intended to act as a signature as contemplated by the federal and state acts.

Practice
Various practices have developed to deal with the effect of the ‘signature’ typed at the end of an electronic message such as an email or attachment to an email. One practice is to including a detailed paragraph in the body of the message explaining the writer’s intention. Another practice is to place that paragraph at the end of the email with other disclaimers. Per haps the simplest and most direct approach is to place at the end of the electronic message words such as: • Signature appended pursuant to the federal and state Electronic Transactions Acts Such words would indicate the writer’s intention that the typed electronic signature was intended to operate as a signature as contemplated by the Electronic Transaction Acts

Sub-Prime Speculation

I have a hypothesis.

1. This US sub-prime thing, real or unreal, is shifting Aussie borrowers back to the Big 4
   
2. The service levels for back end settlements (of the Big 4) has never been worse. The Xmas rush is one thing, but the increased volume of business is stressing out the bank's ability to service the Loans.
   

The ability for banks to service loans at the back end is inelastic. Support is predominately labour driven, not technically driven.
If the back end was technically driven, the banks back end would be elastic. If volume of business grows, relatively speaking they would only have to add one or two more staff.

Conclusion 1. Banks need to adopt more sophisticated technology driven solutions. They need to open up their systems, to give conveyancing representatives the ability to perform simple interactive tasks.

Examples:

• view loan status
  
• book in settlement online (date, time, place)
  
• view available funds and provide cheque details
  
• vice verca, book in a discharge and be given amount to discharge loan
  

Conclusion 2. Adopt and incorporate LIXI standards across the industry

Conclusion 3. Dont think government electronic systems are the panacea for the industry's problems

Xmas should be a time of joy. Not a time of senseless frustration

Seven Tiers of Data Recovery

A fire broke out in the building that houses Land Victoria at 570 Bourke Street Melbourne taking out the sub-station and power and the land titles systems. We received the following message -

6 Nov 07 1.28pm "Please be advised that VIC Landata is currently unavailable".

I asked when the system will be up and running again and got this reply

"There has been a fire inside landata’s building, and consequently the whole building has lost power. Unfortunately there is no ETA. I recommend checking the ‘System Status’ screen for further updates. Otherwise, once the Landata message comes down, you will be able to process searches."

The update the following day

7 Nov 07 10.18am

"Please be aware that due to a fire in the office building that houses Landata yesterday they are currently experiencing major service disruptions.

We have been notified that VOTS connectivity has been restored meaning that titles are retrievable.

However, access to the imaging system remains down – so plans, instruments etc remain unavailable for the time being.

All Victorian Property Certificates will be delayed and whilst they can be ordered no orders will be processed until mid next week.

For Victorian Channel Partners we have also been advised that there is no over the counter service available.

We will keep you updated as soon as we know more."

What's the lesson in all this? There has been an unfortunate incident, the power has been taken out for over 12 hours and Land Victoria is out for 24 hours or so. And at the busiest time of the year, Victoria's land registration system is down. This is a major disruption and one that you would have thought avoidable.

I ran this past some technical guys who were astounded but not surprised. They were astounded because this breaches the basic protocol of disaster recovery systems put to the test. There is a good description in Wikipedia of the Seven Tiers of Disaster Recovery. After reading this entry I would have assumed that Land Victoria would have in place Tier 6: Zero or near-Zero data loss or Tier 7: Highly automated, business integrated solution for disaster recovery.

Definition: Tier 6 business continuity solutions maintain the highest levels of data currency. They are used by businesses with little or no tolerance for data loss and who need to restore data to applications rapidly. These solutions have no dependence on the applications or applications staffs to provide data consistency. Tier 6 solutions require some form of Disk Mirroring. There are various synchronous and asynchronous solutions available from the mainframe storage vendors. Each solution is somewhat different, offering different capabilities and providing different Recovery Point and Recovery Time objectives. Often some form of automated tape solution is also required. However, this can vary somewhat depending on the amount and type of data residing on tape.

In a nut shell Tier 6 assumes that your data is kept and mirrored in 2 geographically separate data centres. Data is being written and read to either or both data centres. The data is automatically synched. Each data centre is a mirror of the other. If one data centre goes offline, as it did at 570 Bourke Street, the service is unaffected as the load is then completely taken up at the other data centre.

A good analogy is if you are flying in a 747 and you lose the left engine, you can still fly and land on the right engine.

Google is a prime example of this to the extreme. It would be Tier 7(+). Google is rewriting the book on data centres.

Again I stress the above was an unfortunate incident with staff put at risk. It was shocking to hear people being treated for smoke inhalation or being trapped in lifts. But in a business environment I would have thought this is a case for a Tier 6 DRP (at a minimum). A Tier 6 solution equals 99.9% uptime with no loss of data or service. However, I am not in possession of the full facts or background or steps taken to get the system up and running with no loss of data. There are lessons in all of this.

McClelland favours national e-conveyancing system

THE Rudd Government plans to become directly involved in helping to build the planned National Electronic Conveyancing System (NECS).

Newly appointed Attorney-General Robert McClelland told The Australian that he favoured a national e-conveyancing system and would accept an invitation to join the steering committee in charge of developing it.

The move would strengthen the hand of lawyers, bankers and state governments that favour a single national e-conveyancing system, as opposed to smaller state-based systems.

The NECS steering committee currently has representatives from all state governments, the Law Council of Australia, the Australian Bankers Association and the Australian Institute of Conveyancers.

Mr McClelland said he would ensure that the e-conveyancing issue was discussed at the standing committee of attorneys-general.

The Attorney-General's department had already provided him a briefing on the issues involved in e-conveyancing.

"Clearly, electronic conveyancing is inevitable. It is clearly the way of the future," he said. "There should be a national system. And it is obvious and desirable that this be achieved through a co-operative scheme - and I will be using every endeavour to achieve that."

Among those in favour of including the federal Government on the steering committee was NECS chairman Les Taylor, a former general counsel of the Commonwealth Bank.

Last month, state governments established a high-powered committee of officials to streamline work on a seamless national conveyancing system. This move was an initiative of the Victorian Minister responsible for e-conveyancing, Gavin Jennings. It was aimed at reassuring the banks and other private sector users of conveyancing that all the states worked towards the establishment of a national system.

The initiative, however, has not persuaded the major banks to end their boycott of Victoria's state-based e-conveyancing system. The boycott was imposed over what the banks saw as a lack of co-operation by the Victorian Government with moves aimed at establishing a national system.

Chris Merritt, Legal affairs editor | December 07, 2007 The Australian

Monty Python - "Cheese Shop"

The Players:
John Cleese - Mousebender;
Michael Palin - Wensleydale;
The Scene:
An Edwardian-style shop which carries the signs:
'Ye Olde Cheese Emporium';





Sir, I would like to lodge a caveat.

Sorry, fresh out of caveats

Application surviving proprietor?

No

Application Personal Representative?

No

Discharge of Mortgage

Aah, No

Mortgage?

No

Transfer, dare I ask?

............


That about sums up EC's long awaited 16 November 2007 open for business with Stage 2 financial settlements etc. I went knocking on their door the other day to sign up. It was monty pythonesque to a T. I was passed through several channels and finally put onto the person who could help with the signup. No go was the end game. Perhaps, just perhaps they might be in a position to accept subscribers next February. This is despite the justification of upping registration fees by 20 to 30% for over the counter dealings to encourage electronic uptake. My gripe is not with EC and their system, it is the blatant public rip off on jacking up fees by 30%.

From a pure conveyancing perspective, I was dead keen to give the system a road test by being involved with their trial. Even just to lodge a caveat. How can one really know whether the system that EC has built, using public funds, is any good? Given my personal experience in building online conveyancing systems, new systems will have flaws, there will be bugs but it is only through testing and use can you end up with a system that works. And one where users find the experience intuitive, dead simple and enjoyable. The user experience is what counts. Based on the demonstration disk EC has circulated, I am not confident the user experience is all that good. I did a short review in an earlier blog entry.

Gouda?


The reply

15 Feb 08. Since this blog entry, EC is open for business and you can now register your interest, sign up, undertake training and hopefully start transacting. BH

Electronic Transactions (Victoria) Bill ~ a reflection

This is the speech given by the Hon. Gavin W. JENNINGS on 10 May 2000 in support of passing the Electronic Transactions (Victoria) Bill, now an Act. Today (in 2007) Gavin Jennings is now the Minister for Environment and Climate Change, Minister for Innovation and is a representative in the Upper House / Legislative Council. Most importantly his portfolio oversees the introduction of Electronic Conveyancing in Victoria.

It has been reported by EC Jim Walker, General Manager, Electronic Conveyancing Project, the Victorian Minister for Environment and Climate Change, Gavin Jennings MLC, and the New South Wales Minister for Lands, Tony Kelly MLC, have issued a joint communiqué affirming a number principles for the development of a national electronic conveyancing system.

The text of the speech given by G W Jennings back in 10 May 2000 --

Hon. Gavin W. JENNINGS (Melbourne) -- Mr Katsambanis has given a hypnotic presentation that raised a huge range of issues. It is incumbent on the government to consider those issues in its consideration of the legislation and any other legal remedies it may seek to pursue. Mr Katsambanis said a revolution was taking place in electronic commerce and the use of the Internet. The resultant growth of knowledge and information that is available in the world of cyberspace, as he describes it, led him in his analysis to almost believe cyberspace is the real world and the physical world is the world outside cyberspace.

That is an interesting insight and probably demonstrates the depth of his concern and attention to the important technological advancement of the transmission of information electronically.

However, there needs to be an appropriate balance between the physical world and the legislative environment we create and this important technological and social development. The electronic transmission of information relates not only to commercial transactions but also to the social life and cultural development of many communities around the globe.

It is appropriate for the government to provide the legislative framework in which those transactions can take place, particularly if they relate to the world of commerce and as they may relate to potential litigation about the abuse of that information.

I refer to the current advertising campaign of IBM about the tyranny of distance and the nature of economies such as Australia that rely on commodity prices and export markets. The scene is in the Midwest of the United States of America where two farmers are side by side in their vans. In Australia they would be called utes but in America they are somewhat larger vehicles. One says to the other, 'Hey, Earl, have you thought of using the Internet to sell your feedstock?', The answer is, 'We're not selling books; we sell feedstock to everybody in the district'. The reply is, 'Earl, have you ever left the district?'. That is a measure of the nature of economic activity, be it Midwest America or remote parts of Australia.

That 30-second vignette clearly demonstrates the commercial world we have known in the past as the world that has changed and will change forever. I agree with the central thesis of Mr Katsambanis's argument that the world is changing and will continue to change at an ever-evolving rate.

In his second-reading speech the Minister for State and Regional Development outlined the changing economic activity that is currently taking place on the Internet and through e-commerce arrangements. Currently it is estimated to be $300 billion next year and is expected to increase three or four-fold within the next three years. That is a significant development. The role of the state government in the global phenomenon is to think of the appropriate levels of responsibility of state administration. This is where I divert from the opposition, which tried to confuse the role.

We must amalgamate the various roles the state government may play in this important issue. It goes to the foundation of a legal framework that acknowledges the validity of the transaction and considers electronic communication to be of equal standing to written material in certain circumstances. It defines the limits of how that may apply to electronic administrative practices and commercial transactions and limits the scope of the application, in particular to wills and other documentation that operate within other aspects of the Victorian statutes that require private transmission anomalies.

The opposition rightly points to the fact that the legislation builds on commonwealth legislation enacted last year and international conventions that were determined by the United Nations Committee on International Trade Law in 1996. The Victorian legislative model is consistent with the approach of developing consultation with all jurisdictions throughout the country. It was agreed to by the standing committee of Australian attorneys-general and was designed to enable a degree of flexibility for emerging technological advancement.

The bill has been drafted in a way that does not favour any particular type of technology. It allows an opportunity for emerging technologies to be included within its scope. The Victorian government drafted the bill in such a way to enable it to deal with a degree of flexibility about those emerging technologies and forms of transactions, some of which are able to be envisaged at this time and some may be beyond the imagination of members of the opposition such as Mr Katsambanis.

The important element that he and other honourable members in both houses identified was the importance of data protection. The opposition called for adequate mechanisms to provide for data protection and a degree of certainty. It said sanctions should apply to inappropriate use of electronic transmission or the impact on hacking.

The good news is: watch this space! Keep an eye on the cursor.

The government intends to address those important issues. The bill is a foundation that must be built upon to provide the legislative mechanisms to provide security and confidence to Victorians who wish to operate on the Internet for their commercial activities. The government recognises the need to provide protection and certainty. The government intends to underpin the growth in the software and hardware sectors and develop proper practices and processes that relate to those transactions. The bill provides a range of the measures that will assist Victorian industry to develop.

The government will consider what is the appropriate role for the state administration to play as a user of emerging technologies. An emphasis of the former government was its visionary approach to emerging technologies. I am a member of a party that spent some time criticising the then government for some of the failures of those emerging technologies.

However, it is worth erring on the side of caution when it comes to being part of a visionary approach to the use of emerging technologies. The government's concern will be to make proper assessments of the viability and demonstrable capacity of emerging technologies as we take them up.

As a member of the government I would be disappointed if the government did not play a role as a supporter and user of emerging technologies. The government faces a challenge in considering how it might play that role effectively while underpinning the development of software and other capacities within Victorian industry and the emerging services sector. Even without getting into the realm of backing winners or providing an inappropriate level of direct public subsidy to private enterprise, an appropriate balance needs to be struck. That is a challenge for the government in dealing with the issue.

Perhaps that is why the opposition has said that the public announcements the government has made about programs such as Connecting Victoria fall short, lack of vision and do not show a preparedness to underpin private sector activity. It is a difficult balance for any administration to strike and it is appropriate to get the concepts right before the government embarks upon that field of endeavour.

That is not to say that the government has not been prepared to fund a number of support programs. They have been supported and promoted by my parliamentary colleague the Minister for State and Regional Development and include Connecting Victoria and the Victorian E-Commerce Early Movers scheme. The Go for IT program will provide 125 traineeships in the Victorian public service to support the emergence in Victoria of a better skilled work force to deal with information technology issues.

A task force has been convened by my ministerial colleagues the Minister for State and Regional Development and the Minister for Post Compulsory Education, Training and Employment to consider Victoria's emerging skills requirements and the training opportunities that may be available to ensure that Victoria has a vibrant information, communication and technology sector in the state.

The Bracks government has successfully looked at making use of the Victorian government web site more efficient by creating Multi-server Express. Victorian citizens can access 92 services online with the touch of a single button. Prior to that initiative a search was required, which demanded some knowledge of the name of the service the Victorian citizen may have wanted to access. The clear design of the web site enables easier access to information for all Victorians.

A point of contention in debate has been the appropriateness of establishing Internet access at town halls versus libraries versus schools and other such locations. It would be disappointing if that issue were to divide the house. I have no doubt that our united position would be to try to achieve effective, efficient access for all Victorians at whatever is the most appropriate location. Regardless of locality and circumstances, Victorians should be able to effectively use the Internet for commercial and social activities and to augment and enhance our education system. Maximum coverage and easy access for all Victorians would ensure no opportunity is lost.

In no way, shape or form should the interface with the technical world -- that world enabling all sorts of human activity -- become an exercise for technonerds or those who pursue information technology in an esoteric fashion. Some use their knowledge in an intimidatory way to add to the insecurity of people who may wish to take up that technology. It is appropriate that people employing such intimidatory tactics feel the wrath of the government. The government has a role in demystifying technology, maximising its potential and facilitating ease of use. That is one of the underlying theoretical themes of the legislation.

Hon. R. M. Hallam -- It might include satellite phones!

Hon. G. W. JENNINGS -- The bill is without prejudice towards any form of technology. Technologies will come and go. One of the strengths of the bill is that it has been drafted in a flexible way to enable it to cover technologies not envisaged.

It is a theoretical framework establishing a baseline in an emerging field; ensuring equity before the law of electronic material transacted that in the past was not recognised as equal to physical documentation.

There has been no pretence that the legislation provides a framework to deal with data protection or sanctions. Such legislation will be required and, when put in place, will supplement the baseline established by the legislation before the house. Debate on the bill has allowed a dialogue between the government and the opposition, the latter expressing concern about the government's intention to address such issues. The message from the opposition that such legislation must be introduced has been heard, and that will be achieved. I commend the bill to the house.