E-Conveyancing in the House

Mr RICH-PHILLIPS (South Eastern Metropolitan) -- I move:

That this house --

(1) notes with concern the repeated failure of the Bracks and Brumby governments to successfully deliver major ICT projects on time and budget including the ultranet, HealthSMART, the myki ticketing system, Project Rosetta, the criminal justice enhancement project, the housing integrated information program, e-conveyancing and the LEAP database replacement;

(2) notes the loss of ICT expertise in government following the disbandment of the Office of the Chief Information Officer; and

(3) calls on the Minister for Finance, WorkCover and the Transport Accident Commission, as minister responsible for procurement, to develop ICT project management expertise within the Department of Treasury and Finance as a key element of all major government ICT procurement projects.

Information and communications technology (ICT) procurement in the Victorian government sector is now a major industry. The Auditor-General estimated that in 2007 the Victorian government spent $1.5 billion on ICT structure and assets. To put that in context, the government claims for the 2006-07 financial year that its total infrastructure investment was $3.2 billion, so the spend on ICT is approximately 45 per cent of the total amount the government has spent on infrastructure. It is a very significant item of government expenditure, and it is an item of government expenditure that the taxpayers of Victoria can and should expect the government to carry out efficiently and effectively.

Over the last 15 years we have seen major changes in the use of ICT by government. Going back to the previous government, which was a pioneer in introducing ICT to the Victorian government sector, we saw entities like the Parliament of Victoria adopt the use of basic ICT. We saw Parliament introduce a website, the document management system for legislative documents and a whole range of that type of generation 1 ICT projects. Those sorts of projects were introduced across government during that seven-year period.

More recently, under this government, we have seen the trend towards the use of ICT continue, and the projects have become more elaborate, more expensive and more complex. As expected, as you evolve through an ICT framework, the returns on those projects have also diminished. The early, simple projects were easy and had big returns. The projects have since become more complex, and the returns have proportionally diminished.

Notwithstanding that, over that period of time we have also seen Victoria slip behind as a state jurisdiction delivering ICT projects. Through the 1990s Victoria was without doubt the leading jurisdiction in Australia among the states and the commonwealth in the use of ICT for service delivery to its constituency base and the use of ICT among government agencies. Victoria has now lost that leading position to other states and territories that have leapt ahead as Victoria has undertaken a number of significant ICT projects that have failed to deliver on their promises, both in terms of cost outcomes and the time frame in which they were to have been delivered.

The first element of this motion relates to the numerous projects which have not been delivered in accordance with the plans that were put in place for them. I would like to start by running through a few of those projects.

At a number of my colleagues on this side of the house intend to speak at some length on particular projects in their portfolio areas, so I will not dwell on them in any great detail.

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Electronic Conveyancing

It has been a similar scenario with the electronic conveyancing system, the subject of some comment in this place. I understand the Leader of the Opposition will make some more detailed comments on this later in the debate. The project was announced in 2004 by the then Minister for Planning, Mary Delahunty, who stated in her announcement in March 2004 that:

Land Victoria estimates that if the 400 000 conveyancing transactions that are conducted manually each year are conducted online, the savings in time and paper will amount to more than $100 million a year.

That was the government's target back in 2004 for the e-conveyancing system: it would process 400 000 transactions and it would save $100 million a year. Having spent $40 million implementing the project, the reality has been quite different. Twelve months after the system became available the total number of transactions that have been undertaken is one -- there has been a single transaction using the e-conveyancing system.

The reason the system has not been taken up is that the solicitors involved in conveyancing will not use it, because they have been advised by their professional bodies that they are at risk of professional liability issues if they do so. The banks will not use it for transactions, because they have concerns about the plethora of state-based e-conveyancing systems and would prefer a national system. Again with this project the government failed to create specifications that were acceptable to the end users.

We have spent $40 million on a system that the key parties -- the conveyancers and the banks -- do not want to use and have demonstrated they will not use because it does not meet their requirements.

At a federal level we now have proposals for a national conveyancing system. This throws great doubt on the investment Victoria has made in its e-conveyancing system. It would appear from coverage of the issue that there is limited prospect of the Victorian e-conveyancing system being picked up as the national model. Apparently there is some support from Queensland, but there is limited support across the other jurisdictions. There is every prospect that the $40 million the Victorian government has committed to this project will be wasted because the system did not meet the requirements of the key parties to conveyancing transactions and has simply not been used.

Four years ago the forecast from the then Minister for Planning, Mary Delahunty, was of 400 000 transactions a year, but that has not come to pass because the government did not do its homework on this project.

Ms PENNICUIK (Southern Metropolitan) 

With regard to the e-conveyancing system, notwithstanding whatever problems there may be in terms of its implementation, it seems the biggest problem is that potential users of the system do not want to use it. That is problem no. 1. I note a rather large article in the Australian in May titled 'Revolt against Victorian e-system' that reported that the private players were refusing to engage with it and that:

The Law Council of Australia and the Australian Bankers Association have written ... to the federal government, urging it to have nothing to do with any plan ...

That seems to make e-conveyancing pretty well doomed.

I note Mr Pakula said the matter is now going to the Council of Australian Governments. Perhaps that would have been the best approach from the beginning. The advice and the understanding was that you needed a national system for e-conveyancing, because people are buying and selling properties across state borders. Certainly we should have learnt from 100 years of federation that having six state-based and perhaps two territory-based systems is a recipe for disaster. If one state attempts to implement this system on its own and then expects the country to integrate eight different systems, it is bound to fail. I note that $40 million has been spent on e-conveyancing; that is not a small amount of money, and it certainly could have been better spent on other projects.