The push for a new forum comes as the Commonwealth Attorney General Mr McClelland moves to prevent one major harmonisation project from falling apart.
Victoria and Queensland are trying to torpedo two-year old plans for a national electronic conveyancing system. The project aims to come in 2010 and would enable paperless transfers of land seamlessly across all jurisdictions.
At a meeting last week, chaired by former NSW premier Bob Carr, the two states drew up plans to kill off the idea (of the single national electronic conveyancing scheme)
The federal Attorney-General described the meeting as regrettable and an example of people pursuing fiefdom interests. "There's a need for a reality check," Mr McClelland said. "We don't want to create a version of the different rail gauges, with people having their separate and discrete systems that can't talk to each other, That would be vandalism of a very important project."
Under Victoria's and Queensland's plan, software developed in Victoria - which the private sector has refused to use - would be rolled out individually by each state. But NSW, banks and law societies insist all states keep to the original plan, which envisaged a national entity to handle all property transfers. They argue it is essential to avoid "jurisdictional creep" leading to discrepancies in separately run state systems.
Mr McClelland said he would use the meeting of attorneys-general to request states to put their cards on the table and declare their agendas, with a view to possibly elevating the project onto the COAG agenda. Victoria led the charge to reject the two-year-old plans in the hope of salvaging its own $30 million online conveyancing project.
Matthew Drummond | The Fin Review | 14 March 2008
Extract from an Article on national legal uniformity
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