Herald Sun - Craig Binnie
July 18, 2009
FRUSTRATED home hunters have wasted countless weekends visiting properties that were out of their price range.
Estate agent Century 21 Wilson Pride was the worst price predictor of the big agencies according to a Herald Sun study of 74 auctions from last weekend.
The agency missed the actual selling price by an average of 19 per cent.
In one case the firm said the expected selling price of an Elwood flat was $325,000. It sold for $412,500.
Buyers advocate David Morrell said agents were messing with people's lives by giving extremely low price estimates.
"If someone is looking in the $300,000 price range they probably don't have a $400,000 budget," he said.
"So all that happens is they waste their time and the agent gets a bigger crowd to make themselves look good at the auction.
"This has got to stop."
Collins Simms was the second worst agent in the study. The agency erred by 17 per cent. Jellis Craig was third on 15 per cent.
Hocking Stuart was off by 11 per cent and Biggin and Scott was off by 14 per cent.
Prospective buyers are particularly angry when properties pass in after bids that are above the advertised price.
Last weekend, Hocking Stuart advertised a Prahran house at $1 million plus and passed it in at $1,020,000 on a reserve of $1,120,000.
Nelson Alexander advertised a house at Gowanbrae at $670,000-$730,000. It was passed in at $700,000 with a reserve of $750,000.
Bennison Mackinnon advertised a Port Melbourne house at $700,000 plus. It was passed in at $760,000, the vendors refused a later offer of $770,000 - $70,000 above the advertised price - and did not disclose the reserve.
Estate agents stress that predicting prices at auction is nearly impossible. But it is deliberate underquoting that angers buyers. Prospective buyers regularly offer the advertised price only to be told the owner will not sell unless it's well above that price.
But the agents continue to advertise the property at the lower price.
The Real Estate Institute of Victoria's chief executive Enzo Raimondo said Consumer Affairs Victoria needed to take action against agents who were breaking the law.
"They are the regulator," Mr Raimondo said. "They really need to do something, enforce them, get rid of some of the practices that aren't helpful."
Mr Raimondo said quoting a price range with an upper and lower price that accurately reflected the market price was a fairer way to quote.
Mr Raimondo said buyers, and agents who did the right thing, should complain to CAV when they saw cases of underquoting.
"Don't tolerate this sort of substandard behaviour," Mr Raimondo said.
CAV said yesterday it was on the lookout for underquoting, but Mr Raimondo mocked a claim by CAV that it had 80 investigators monitoring agents for underquoting and other offences.
"The last person they pinged for underquoting was someone we reported," he said.
CAV spokeswoman Heather Abbott said price-plus advertising was discouraged but was not illegal unless the price was below the price at which the agent knew the vendor was willing to sell.
She said it was up to buyers to research the market.
"CAV views this type of advertising as potentially misleading and complaints received in this regard are assessed and investigated in accordance with CAV policies," she said.
"Agents have been informed they must use their knowledge and skills when appraising property and ensure their advertising reflects a price, which they believe is the likely or estimated selling price.
"CAV will continue to take enforcement action against real estate agents where regulations have been breached.
"Prosecution is reserved for the most serious of cases.
"While agents have a responsibility to advertise a property at the vendor's asking or, in the absence of this price, the likely selling price, consumers have a responsibility to ensure they are informed."
Comment
I recently sold in Melbourne discussed selling price with agent. Price discussed was to be high 700 k low 800 K. First adv by the agent went in at 650 k plus. Rang agent and asked why? Reply was "you have to get people in" I complained. Next adv was 700k plus. Sold at 840K. I can see why people get frustrated, time wasted, inspection reports etc. Consumer Affairs Victoria needed to take action against agents who were breaking the law.
Posted by: Alan of Merimbula ex Melbourne 9:31am July 18, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Raid on estate agents underquoting prices
NEWS - By Craig Binnie
July 28, 2009
SIXTY estate agents' offices have been raided in Victoria by investigators in a major crackdown on underquoting.
More than 1000 recent property sales files were inspected and several agents are expected to face prosecution.
At least one agent tried to stop investigators accessing his files and others were said to be shocked at the scope of the investigation, the Herald Sun reports.
Consumer Affairs Victoria director Dr Claire Noone said the agent initially denied inspectors entry. "However, after being advised that failure to allow entry and inspection of files were both offences under the Estate Agents Act, CAV successfully gained entry," she said.
HAVE you been a victim of underquoting? Tell us below.
The raids follow the Herald Sun's campaign on agents misleading and using time-wasting advertising tactics that trick buyers into inspecting properties they cannot afford.
Up to 80 investigators are examining seized files seeking illegal and unethical price underquoting. Dr Noone said agents found to be systematically breaking the law would face disciplinary action and potentially lose their licences.
The raids centred on western and northern suburbs including Brunswick, Clifton Hill, Coburg, Craigieburn, Essendon, Pascoe Vale, Point Cook and Werribee.
Dr Noone said investigators collected details relating to the estimated selling price established by the agent, the vendor's price, the advertised price and the final sale price.
"Any agent engaging in dubious practices will be thoroughly investigated," she said.
The breadth of the raids stunned agents who have told the Real Estate Institute of Victoria that there was no need to abide by laws banning deliberate underquoting because nobody was enforcing them.
Last year CAV's compliance, monitoring and inspections of agents resulted in just five enforceable undertakings, five civil proceedings and two criminal prosecutions.
Dr Noone said the blitz aimed to ensure agents followed guidelines and the law.
The State Government is examining ways to clean up the real estate industry. Consumer Affairs Minister Tony Robinson is considering a ban on price-plus advertising such as $400,000+ because agents have misused it.
July 28, 2009
SIXTY estate agents' offices have been raided in Victoria by investigators in a major crackdown on underquoting.
More than 1000 recent property sales files were inspected and several agents are expected to face prosecution.
At least one agent tried to stop investigators accessing his files and others were said to be shocked at the scope of the investigation, the Herald Sun reports.
Consumer Affairs Victoria director Dr Claire Noone said the agent initially denied inspectors entry. "However, after being advised that failure to allow entry and inspection of files were both offences under the Estate Agents Act, CAV successfully gained entry," she said.
HAVE you been a victim of underquoting? Tell us below.
The raids follow the Herald Sun's campaign on agents misleading and using time-wasting advertising tactics that trick buyers into inspecting properties they cannot afford.
Up to 80 investigators are examining seized files seeking illegal and unethical price underquoting. Dr Noone said agents found to be systematically breaking the law would face disciplinary action and potentially lose their licences.
The raids centred on western and northern suburbs including Brunswick, Clifton Hill, Coburg, Craigieburn, Essendon, Pascoe Vale, Point Cook and Werribee.
Dr Noone said investigators collected details relating to the estimated selling price established by the agent, the vendor's price, the advertised price and the final sale price.
"Any agent engaging in dubious practices will be thoroughly investigated," she said.
The breadth of the raids stunned agents who have told the Real Estate Institute of Victoria that there was no need to abide by laws banning deliberate underquoting because nobody was enforcing them.
Last year CAV's compliance, monitoring and inspections of agents resulted in just five enforceable undertakings, five civil proceedings and two criminal prosecutions.
Dr Noone said the blitz aimed to ensure agents followed guidelines and the law.
The State Government is examining ways to clean up the real estate industry. Consumer Affairs Minister Tony Robinson is considering a ban on price-plus advertising such as $400,000+ because agents have misused it.
Estate agents raided by Consumer Affairs Victoria
The Age - AAP - July 29, 2009
Investigators raided the offices of dozens of Victorian estate agencies in a major offensive against underquoting.
Sixty offices have been raided by Consumer Affairs Victoria (CAV) and files relating to more than 1,000 recent property sales were inspected, News Ltd reported.
One agent tried to prevent CAV inspectors from seeing sales files, CAV director Dr Claire Noone said.
‘‘However, after being advised that failure to allow entry and inspection of files were both offences under the Estate Agents Act, CAV successfully gained entry," she said.
The raids, which focused on agencies in Melbourne's north and west, were aimed at stopping unscrupulous agents from misleading clients and using dodgy advertising to tempt buyers to inspect properties they can't afford.
Up to 80 investigators are examining seized files.
Agents found to be breaching the law will face disciplinary action and could lose their trading licence, Dr Noone said.
Investigators raided the offices of dozens of Victorian estate agencies in a major offensive against underquoting.
Sixty offices have been raided by Consumer Affairs Victoria (CAV) and files relating to more than 1,000 recent property sales were inspected, News Ltd reported.
One agent tried to prevent CAV inspectors from seeing sales files, CAV director Dr Claire Noone said.
‘‘However, after being advised that failure to allow entry and inspection of files were both offences under the Estate Agents Act, CAV successfully gained entry," she said.
The raids, which focused on agencies in Melbourne's north and west, were aimed at stopping unscrupulous agents from misleading clients and using dodgy advertising to tempt buyers to inspect properties they can't afford.
Up to 80 investigators are examining seized files.
Agents found to be breaching the law will face disciplinary action and could lose their trading licence, Dr Noone said.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Files Vanished, Young Chinese Lose the Future
NYT - "If you don’t have it, just forget it! No matter how capable you are, they will not hire you."
WANG JINDONG, a college graduate in China, on the loss of a file containing his grades, evaluations and other personal information.
WUBU, China — For much of his education, Xue Longlong was silently accompanied from grade to grade, school to school, by a sealed Manila envelope stamped top secret. Stuffed inside were grades, test results, evaluations by fellow students and teachers, his Communist Party application and — most important for his job prospects — proof of his 2006 college degree.
Everyone in China who has been to high school has such a file. The files are irreplaceable histories of achievement and failure, the starting point for potential employers, government officials and others judging an individual’s worth. Often keys to the future, they are locked tight in government, school or workplace cabinets to eliminate any chance they might vanish.
But two years ago, Mr. Xue’s file did vanish. So did the files of at least 10 others, all 2006 college graduates with exemplary records, all from poor families living near this gritty north-central town on the wide banks of the Yellow River.
With the Manila folders went their futures, they say.
read more
WANG JINDONG, a college graduate in China, on the loss of a file containing his grades, evaluations and other personal information.
WUBU, China — For much of his education, Xue Longlong was silently accompanied from grade to grade, school to school, by a sealed Manila envelope stamped top secret. Stuffed inside were grades, test results, evaluations by fellow students and teachers, his Communist Party application and — most important for his job prospects — proof of his 2006 college degree.
Everyone in China who has been to high school has such a file. The files are irreplaceable histories of achievement and failure, the starting point for potential employers, government officials and others judging an individual’s worth. Often keys to the future, they are locked tight in government, school or workplace cabinets to eliminate any chance they might vanish.
But two years ago, Mr. Xue’s file did vanish. So did the files of at least 10 others, all 2006 college graduates with exemplary records, all from poor families living near this gritty north-central town on the wide banks of the Yellow River.
With the Manila folders went their futures, they say.
read more
Sunday, July 26, 2009
States: more often a brake on good government than on bad.
Paul Kelly, Editor-at-large | July 25, 2009
Article from: The Australian
IN an aggressive analysis, Liberal spokesman Tony Abbott reveals how much Kevin Rudd's 2007 public hospital takeover pledge shocked the Howard government and calls on the Liberal Party to abandon a century of history and embrace greater powers for the national government.
Abbott's argument is that John Howard, far from intruding on state powers, should have gone much further. Abbott's central proposition is that "the federation is broken and does need to be fixed". This is his conclusion from his experience as a federal minister and the main idea in his new book, Battlelines, that expounds a modern conservatism for the Liberal Party and seeks a new constitution for Australia.
For Abbott, Liberal Party attitudes on federalism are obsolete, divorced from public opinion and doomed to permanent policy failure. He is convinced that Rudd's new federalism also will fail and urges the Liberal Party to confront the crisis in Australian governance. Abbott argues the Howard government was locked into an unwinnable dilemma. It kept taking "hits for political problems that weren't its fault but which it had no way to fix". The public hospital dilemma, now facing the Rudd government, was the supreme example.
But there were many others. "Tackling the dysfunctional federation turned out to be a lost opportunity for the Howard government," Abbott says, alluding to serious disputes within the former government.
"One of the paradoxes of the 2007 election was the perverse way federal Labor benefited from state Labor's failures.
"When voters complained about poor public hospitals, public schools and public transport, John Howard correctly observed that these were state responsibilities. By contrast, Kevin Rudd capitalised on voters' anger by promising to work with the states to solve the problems that state government ineptitude had largely brought about."
For Abbott, Howard opened the door to the revolution. He says Howard approached gun laws, school curriculum and water policy in terms of "solving problems", rather than as an exercise in federal theory or constitutional niceties. Abbott's contempt for state governments that break deals, bolster trade union powers, run huge bureaucracies and refuse serious reforms is palpable. In Battlelines he wants Howard's philosophy to be taken to its next stage.
Abbott dramatises his argument by seeking a constitutional referendum that enables the national government to pass laws "for the peace, order and good government of the country". This means the national government could propose laws in any area free from the constraints of Section 51 of the Constitution. As Abbott says, his idea "wouldn't abolish the states" but would stop them from "jeopardising policy in areas where the national government was determined to intervene".
The mechanism would be similar to the "disallowance provisions" the commonwealth parliament has in relation to territory laws. Equipped with this power, the commonwealth would be better placed to impose policy directions on the states. Once the power existed, it would need to be used only in rare instances. This is a radical solution unlikely to win internal Liberal Party support or pass at referendum. Abbott says the message from Rudd's problems is obvious: fixing the federation is Australia's "biggest political problem" and will fall to the next Coalition government.
He argues the narrative from the Howard years cannot be avoided; in schools, health, water, mental health and disability services, "the states rarely delivered" despite federal funds. They are resistant to structural reform and neither bribery nor penalties works.
Abbott argues that economic prosperity under Howard only intensified public demands. People locked in traffic jams or waiting with distressed kids for hours in a public hospital just wanted their problems fixed. The pressure inevitably settled on the prime minister because people "expect the commonwealth to 'do something"'. He wants to purge the old-fashioned Liberal Party fixation with state rights and have a debate based on the experiences of the Howard era.
He says the people want "national leadership", not "constitutional purity".
Much of the present federalism debate is futile, Abbott asserts. Proposals usually mean giving the states more revenue powers or fewer spending responsibilities. He says: "The difficulty is that people are reluctant to give the states any more powers than they currently have and the states won't surrender anything without a trade-off. The only way to sort out responsibilities in areas where the two levels of government are both involved is to put one level of government in overall charge."
This would not be needed if competent state governments such as those of Nick Greiner or Jeff Kennett still existed. But those days are gone. The truth, Abbott says, is that the states are the 2nd XI of Australian politics and they "are much more often a brake on good government than on bad".
Abbott reveals that after Rudd's 2007 pledge to take over the public hospital system if improvements were not delivered, there was a Howard-Abbott-Peter Costello meeting in Howard's Sydney office to try to devise a response. Various alternatives were canvassed including "the 'mega' option of a full commonwealth government takeover".
Abbott says "in the end no decision was taken because there was no course of action which all three of us could agree".
"The truth was that the Howard government had become a prisoner of its record as all long-lived governments eventually do," he writes. "An immediate commonwealth (public hospital) takeover might have looked like responding to the other side. As well, it would have provoked the Liberal Party's 'anti-centralism' brigade, even though it was the states that had run hospitals from head office through giant unwieldy bureaucracies. At that stage anything dramatic would have been cast as an admission of public failure."
Compared with Rudd's bold headlines about a possible commonwealth takeover, the Howard government's takeover of a single hospital, the Mersey Hospital near Devonport, with the creation of a local board to run it, seemed a "second order change". Abbott wanted a radical assertion of commonwealth powers but never got it. The irony is that the Rudd government now seems unlikely to honour the expectations it created on public hospitals.
Aware of the criticism he will provoke, Abbott lays down two markers.
First, more commonwealth policy clout means less government bureaucracy, more privatisation and service delivery through private entities. Second, it means smaller government overall.
"There are very few problems in contemporary Australia that a dysfunctional federation doesn't make worse," Abbott says. "The state governments have a legal responsibility for issues which only the national government has the political authority and financial muscle to resolve. At present, the only effective way to improve public hospitals, for instance, or to allocate Murray-Darling water better or to establish a national school curriculum is for the commonwealth to bribe the states. All to often the states take the money but fail to deliver the outcomes.
"In large areas of our national life, no one is really in charge because the commonwealth funds the service but the state delivers it. Hence, in these areas, the state governments tend to wield power without responsibility while the commonwealth suffers responsibility without power."
Article from: The Australian
IN an aggressive analysis, Liberal spokesman Tony Abbott reveals how much Kevin Rudd's 2007 public hospital takeover pledge shocked the Howard government and calls on the Liberal Party to abandon a century of history and embrace greater powers for the national government.
Abbott's argument is that John Howard, far from intruding on state powers, should have gone much further. Abbott's central proposition is that "the federation is broken and does need to be fixed". This is his conclusion from his experience as a federal minister and the main idea in his new book, Battlelines, that expounds a modern conservatism for the Liberal Party and seeks a new constitution for Australia.
For Abbott, Liberal Party attitudes on federalism are obsolete, divorced from public opinion and doomed to permanent policy failure. He is convinced that Rudd's new federalism also will fail and urges the Liberal Party to confront the crisis in Australian governance. Abbott argues the Howard government was locked into an unwinnable dilemma. It kept taking "hits for political problems that weren't its fault but which it had no way to fix". The public hospital dilemma, now facing the Rudd government, was the supreme example.
But there were many others. "Tackling the dysfunctional federation turned out to be a lost opportunity for the Howard government," Abbott says, alluding to serious disputes within the former government.
"One of the paradoxes of the 2007 election was the perverse way federal Labor benefited from state Labor's failures.
"When voters complained about poor public hospitals, public schools and public transport, John Howard correctly observed that these were state responsibilities. By contrast, Kevin Rudd capitalised on voters' anger by promising to work with the states to solve the problems that state government ineptitude had largely brought about."
For Abbott, Howard opened the door to the revolution. He says Howard approached gun laws, school curriculum and water policy in terms of "solving problems", rather than as an exercise in federal theory or constitutional niceties. Abbott's contempt for state governments that break deals, bolster trade union powers, run huge bureaucracies and refuse serious reforms is palpable. In Battlelines he wants Howard's philosophy to be taken to its next stage.
Abbott dramatises his argument by seeking a constitutional referendum that enables the national government to pass laws "for the peace, order and good government of the country". This means the national government could propose laws in any area free from the constraints of Section 51 of the Constitution. As Abbott says, his idea "wouldn't abolish the states" but would stop them from "jeopardising policy in areas where the national government was determined to intervene".
The mechanism would be similar to the "disallowance provisions" the commonwealth parliament has in relation to territory laws. Equipped with this power, the commonwealth would be better placed to impose policy directions on the states. Once the power existed, it would need to be used only in rare instances. This is a radical solution unlikely to win internal Liberal Party support or pass at referendum. Abbott says the message from Rudd's problems is obvious: fixing the federation is Australia's "biggest political problem" and will fall to the next Coalition government.
He argues the narrative from the Howard years cannot be avoided; in schools, health, water, mental health and disability services, "the states rarely delivered" despite federal funds. They are resistant to structural reform and neither bribery nor penalties works.
Abbott argues that economic prosperity under Howard only intensified public demands. People locked in traffic jams or waiting with distressed kids for hours in a public hospital just wanted their problems fixed. The pressure inevitably settled on the prime minister because people "expect the commonwealth to 'do something"'. He wants to purge the old-fashioned Liberal Party fixation with state rights and have a debate based on the experiences of the Howard era.
He says the people want "national leadership", not "constitutional purity".
Much of the present federalism debate is futile, Abbott asserts. Proposals usually mean giving the states more revenue powers or fewer spending responsibilities. He says: "The difficulty is that people are reluctant to give the states any more powers than they currently have and the states won't surrender anything without a trade-off. The only way to sort out responsibilities in areas where the two levels of government are both involved is to put one level of government in overall charge."
This would not be needed if competent state governments such as those of Nick Greiner or Jeff Kennett still existed. But those days are gone. The truth, Abbott says, is that the states are the 2nd XI of Australian politics and they "are much more often a brake on good government than on bad".
Abbott reveals that after Rudd's 2007 pledge to take over the public hospital system if improvements were not delivered, there was a Howard-Abbott-Peter Costello meeting in Howard's Sydney office to try to devise a response. Various alternatives were canvassed including "the 'mega' option of a full commonwealth government takeover".
Abbott says "in the end no decision was taken because there was no course of action which all three of us could agree".
"The truth was that the Howard government had become a prisoner of its record as all long-lived governments eventually do," he writes. "An immediate commonwealth (public hospital) takeover might have looked like responding to the other side. As well, it would have provoked the Liberal Party's 'anti-centralism' brigade, even though it was the states that had run hospitals from head office through giant unwieldy bureaucracies. At that stage anything dramatic would have been cast as an admission of public failure."
Compared with Rudd's bold headlines about a possible commonwealth takeover, the Howard government's takeover of a single hospital, the Mersey Hospital near Devonport, with the creation of a local board to run it, seemed a "second order change". Abbott wanted a radical assertion of commonwealth powers but never got it. The irony is that the Rudd government now seems unlikely to honour the expectations it created on public hospitals.
Aware of the criticism he will provoke, Abbott lays down two markers.
First, more commonwealth policy clout means less government bureaucracy, more privatisation and service delivery through private entities. Second, it means smaller government overall.
"There are very few problems in contemporary Australia that a dysfunctional federation doesn't make worse," Abbott says. "The state governments have a legal responsibility for issues which only the national government has the political authority and financial muscle to resolve. At present, the only effective way to improve public hospitals, for instance, or to allocate Murray-Darling water better or to establish a national school curriculum is for the commonwealth to bribe the states. All to often the states take the money but fail to deliver the outcomes.
"In large areas of our national life, no one is really in charge because the commonwealth funds the service but the state delivers it. Hence, in these areas, the state governments tend to wield power without responsibility while the commonwealth suffers responsibility without power."
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Gates Faults U.S. on Data Privacy and Immigration
By HEATHER TIMMONS - NYT - 25 July 09
NEW DELHI, India — In a far-ranging speech on Friday, Bill Gates criticized the American government’s policy on immigration and data privacy, predicted giant leaps in technology in the near future and explained why he had to shut down his Facebook page.
“Over the next decade, the entire way we interact” with computers will change, Mr. Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, told hundreds of government officials and information technology executives in New Delhi. Mr. Gates spoke of cellphones that would recognize people around them or be used to test for diseases, computers equipped with voice recognition and an Internet that was used for much more than Web pages.
While the recession has been a “big deal,” it has not slowed innovation, he said, in part because countries like India and companies like Microsoft are investing in education and research for a new generation of computer scientists.
Microsoft is angling to work on India’s national identity card project, Mr. Gates said, and he will be meeting with Nandan Nilekani, the minister in charge. Like Mr. Gates, Mr. Nilekani stopped running the technology company he helped to start, Infosys, after expanding it into one of the biggest players in the business. He is now tasked with providing identity cards for India’s 1.2 billion citizens starting in 2011. Right now in India, many records like births, deaths, immunizations and driving violations are kept on paper in local offices.
Mr. Gates was also critical of the United States government’s unwillingness to adopt a national identity card, or allow some businesses, like health care, to centralize data-keeping on individuals.
“It has always come back to the idea that ‘The computer knows too much about you,’ ” he said.
The United States “got off to a bad start” when it comes to using computers to keep data about its citizens, he said. Doctors are not allowed to share records about an individual patient, and virtual doctor visits are banned, he said, which “wastes a lot of money.” The United States “had better come up with a better model” for health care, he said.
He was also critical of Congress’s stance on immigration, and said he would like to see immigration exceptions for “smart people.” Canadian laws are more favorable, he said, because they allow immigrants to work if they are offered a high-paying job. Microsoft has created “a lot of jobs in Canada for that reason,” he said.
Asked whether he ever “unplugs,” abandoning e-mail messages, computers and his cellphone entirely, Mr. Gates laughed and said “I’m not a 24-hour technology person.” He said he read a lot “and sometimes not on a screen.” He added that he was not big on text messaging. “All these tools of technology let us waste our time if we’re not careful,” he said.
Mr. Gates said the buzzwords “social networking” applied to something that had been around for a long time — a way to communicate with numerous people at the same time.
He acknowledged that he once had a Facebook page, but every day “ten thousand people tried to be my friend.” He said he spent too much time trying to decide “Do I know them? Don’t I know them?” Ultimately, he said, “I had to give it up.”
NEW DELHI, India — In a far-ranging speech on Friday, Bill Gates criticized the American government’s policy on immigration and data privacy, predicted giant leaps in technology in the near future and explained why he had to shut down his Facebook page.
“Over the next decade, the entire way we interact” with computers will change, Mr. Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, told hundreds of government officials and information technology executives in New Delhi. Mr. Gates spoke of cellphones that would recognize people around them or be used to test for diseases, computers equipped with voice recognition and an Internet that was used for much more than Web pages.
While the recession has been a “big deal,” it has not slowed innovation, he said, in part because countries like India and companies like Microsoft are investing in education and research for a new generation of computer scientists.
Microsoft is angling to work on India’s national identity card project, Mr. Gates said, and he will be meeting with Nandan Nilekani, the minister in charge. Like Mr. Gates, Mr. Nilekani stopped running the technology company he helped to start, Infosys, after expanding it into one of the biggest players in the business. He is now tasked with providing identity cards for India’s 1.2 billion citizens starting in 2011. Right now in India, many records like births, deaths, immunizations and driving violations are kept on paper in local offices.
Mr. Gates was also critical of the United States government’s unwillingness to adopt a national identity card, or allow some businesses, like health care, to centralize data-keeping on individuals.
“It has always come back to the idea that ‘The computer knows too much about you,’ ” he said.
The United States “got off to a bad start” when it comes to using computers to keep data about its citizens, he said. Doctors are not allowed to share records about an individual patient, and virtual doctor visits are banned, he said, which “wastes a lot of money.” The United States “had better come up with a better model” for health care, he said.
He was also critical of Congress’s stance on immigration, and said he would like to see immigration exceptions for “smart people.” Canadian laws are more favorable, he said, because they allow immigrants to work if they are offered a high-paying job. Microsoft has created “a lot of jobs in Canada for that reason,” he said.
Asked whether he ever “unplugs,” abandoning e-mail messages, computers and his cellphone entirely, Mr. Gates laughed and said “I’m not a 24-hour technology person.” He said he read a lot “and sometimes not on a screen.” He added that he was not big on text messaging. “All these tools of technology let us waste our time if we’re not careful,” he said.
Mr. Gates said the buzzwords “social networking” applied to something that had been around for a long time — a way to communicate with numerous people at the same time.
He acknowledged that he once had a Facebook page, but every day “ten thousand people tried to be my friend.” He said he spent too much time trying to decide “Do I know them? Don’t I know them?” Ultimately, he said, “I had to give it up.”
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Conservative lawyers struggle with Web 2.0
Source: The New Lawyer | 23 July 09
As law firms strive to get closer to clients and better position themselves to bid for work in the global economic crisis, social networking has become the tool de rigeur.
Law firms and their professional service counterparts are increasingly focusing on networking and collective intelligence technologies as a way to maintain market position, a new report into how social networking is used in law firms reveals.
Firms are using "Web 2.0 to communicate with customers and business partners, as well as to encourage collaboration in the firm and help manage knowledge internally," the report, Social Networking for the Legal Profession, written by Penny Edwards and Lee Bryant from Headshift, states.
Lawyers are particularly well suited to social networking, the report suggests. It has "always been an important feature of the way they do business, and there are many characteristics of lawerly behaviour that map very closely to the features of online social networking".
The Headshift report suggests however that lawyers, "traditionally conservative" adopters of technology, have not had the time to consider the implications of these social and technological developments. Some dismiss them as "passing fads" and consider them "unlikely to have any material impact on the legal world".
The popularity of sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube just add to lawyers' perception that social networking is just for the online, out-of-work and younger generation of lawyers.
The development of legal content and expertise as a social endeavour, the relationship-based business development, on top of the nature of a "strong guild-like legal community", each enhance this compatibility, it states.
Technological advances and continued evolution is offering increased opportunities for re-engineering business, the 181 page report states. "New social technologies offer possibilities for radical change in the way things are done."
In August 2008, CCH surveyed 229 professionals from the legal and professional service professions to gauge the effects of Web 2.0 usage on the way professionals access, absorb and disseminate information.
The survey found that 31.4 per cent of respondents use social network sits for frequent personal use, while 42.4 per cent thought a social online community concept in a specific professional context would be valuable.
The CCH survey found that 20.1 per cent of the legal sector respondents use social networking sites for professional use frequently. Wikis are even more popular within the legal sector, frequently used for professional purposes by 33.3 per cent of respondents. Blogs, however, remain the most popular, being used professionally by 35.2 per cent of people.
As law firms strive to get closer to clients and better position themselves to bid for work in the global economic crisis, social networking has become the tool de rigeur. Law firms and their professional service counterparts are increasingly focusing on networking and collective intelligence technologies as a way to maintain market position, a new report into how social networking is used in law firms reveals.
Firms are using "Web 2.0 to communicate with customers and business partners, as well as to encourage collaboration in the firm and help manage knowledge internally," the report, Social Networking for the Legal Profession, written by Penny Edwards and Lee Bryant from Headshift, states.
Lawyers are particularly well suited to social networking, the report suggests. It has "always been an important feature of the way they do business, and there are many characteristics of lawerly behaviour that map very closely to the features of online social networking".
The Headshift report suggests however that lawyers, "traditionally conservative" adopters of technology, have not had the time to consider the implications of these social and technological developments. Some dismiss them as "passing fads" and consider them "unlikely to have any material impact on the legal world".
The popularity of sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube just add to lawyers' perception that social networking is just for the online, out-of-work and younger generation of lawyers.
The development of legal content and expertise as a social endeavour, the relationship-based business development, on top of the nature of a "strong guild-like legal community", each enhance this compatibility, it states.
Technological advances and continued evolution is offering increased opportunities for re-engineering business, the 181 page report states. "New social technologies offer possibilities for radical change in the way things are done."
In August 2008, CCH surveyed 229 professionals from the legal and professional service professions to gauge the effects of Web 2.0 usage on the way professionals access, absorb and disseminate information.
The survey found that 31.4 per cent of respondents use social network sits for frequent personal use, while 42.4 per cent thought a social online community concept in a specific professional context would be valuable.
The CCH survey found that 20.1 per cent of the legal sector respondents use social networking sites for professional use frequently. Wikis are even more popular within the legal sector, frequently used for professional purposes by 33.3 per cent of respondents. Blogs, however, remain the most popular, being used professionally by 35.2 per cent of people.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
The favourite tricks of real estate agents
Marika Dobbin | The Age
July 15, 2009
Stuart Washington's recent blog about the dirty little secrets of financial planners got such a big response we thought we'd give it another crack, but this time looking at another group of suits in posh cars - real estate agents. Most real estate agents are decent folk. But there are grubby ones too, those who play property like a Monopoly game and love to cheat. Here are some favourite tricks.
Have you been on the receiving end of any tricks of the trade? Have your say.
Dirty little secret #1
There is an old adage among real-estate agents, ''quote 'em low and watch 'em go. Quote 'em high and watch 'em die". The practice of under quoting is widespread and has surged again in recent months. It is when potential buyers are told a price much lower than a property's true market value and the owner's reserve. Unfortunately, under quoting is rife because it works. Every weekend hopeful buyers are lured to an auction thinking they can afford, for example, $850,000-plus for a four bedroom house in Templestowe, Melbourne, only to be broken hearted when sells for $1.51m, as happened at 45 Taparoo Road last month.
Dirty little secret #2
The reverse of under quoting is over quoting, a ploy some agents use to win business. In this case, agents promise a vendor their house will fetch a price well above its market value, whether to convince them to sell or to beat others for the right to sell it. Once the contract is signed, the agent begins to groom the owner to accept a lower price. Adding even more insult to injury is the fact that many times property is actually sold for less than it is worth. This happens when the agent can not be bothered with the hard yakka to get, for example, an extra 5 per cent for their vendor. Such agents have a churn mentality, simply finding a price the owner will accept, selling the house and moving on to the next campaign.
Dirty little secret #3
Vendors can be cheated in another way too. Very naughty agents have been known to withhold good offers made before auction, even those well above the reserve, for several reasons. Sometimes, the offer comes through another agent at the firm and the original agent doesn't want to share commission. So, the bid is never put to the vendor or is put to them but at less than the real offer to be knocked back. Other times the agency wants to promote its brand by pushing ahead with the auction no matter what. It wants the vendor to spend the full amount on advertising because it is a lighthouse to attract other buyers and sellers to the business.
Dirty little secret #4
Now we get to the dummy tricks, used by agents who never outgrew their imaginary friends. Dummy offers are when agents claim to the vendor or buyer they have an offer that is purely fabrication. This tactic is used to make buyers increase their bid in a private sale or expression of interest campaign. It can also be used to groom vendors into accepting a lower price than they want. Remember, the agent wants to sell more than anything, to get their commission. If the agent has promised an unrealistic $1m for a property, a common trick is come back with a fake offer, say $800,000. The vendor will reject it but the process of talking down from their original expectation has started.
Dirty little secret #5
Dummy bidding is another old trick in the magic bag. While in the past it was normal for auctioneers to accept bids cast by street trees and passing pigeons when action was slow, these days it has become more sophisticated. Some very sneaky agents and vendors now enlist friends to cast fake bids that push prices up. Like under quoting, dummy bidding is popular because it works. And, it is almost impossible to prove, making it still very much a part of the real estate landscape.
Now the Top Five is done, but there is one last secret worth mentioning, possibly the worst kept secret of all. The visual trickery used in advertising photos is so endemic consumers are wise to it, in a big way. Lounge rooms are stretched, power lines removed and artificial sunlight beamed in, all thanks to some serious Photoshopping. A relatively new trick is the use of flashy display furniture that is actually made on a smaller scale than real furniture to tizz up an ordinary house and make the room look bigger.
Having revealed all of that, it is easy to see why real-estate agents have a collective reputation only slightly less murky than journalists. For what it is worth, I have dealt with many agents in the course of my duties and found most to be upstanding. Whether you can trust a journalist on that is up to you.
Thanks to buyers advocate David Morrell, from Morrell and Koren for his help with this list.
Marika Dobbin is The Age's Property Editor
July 15, 2009
Stuart Washington's recent blog about the dirty little secrets of financial planners got such a big response we thought we'd give it another crack, but this time looking at another group of suits in posh cars - real estate agents. Most real estate agents are decent folk. But there are grubby ones too, those who play property like a Monopoly game and love to cheat. Here are some favourite tricks.
Have you been on the receiving end of any tricks of the trade? Have your say.
Dirty little secret #1
There is an old adage among real-estate agents, ''quote 'em low and watch 'em go. Quote 'em high and watch 'em die". The practice of under quoting is widespread and has surged again in recent months. It is when potential buyers are told a price much lower than a property's true market value and the owner's reserve. Unfortunately, under quoting is rife because it works. Every weekend hopeful buyers are lured to an auction thinking they can afford, for example, $850,000-plus for a four bedroom house in Templestowe, Melbourne, only to be broken hearted when sells for $1.51m, as happened at 45 Taparoo Road last month.
Dirty little secret #2
The reverse of under quoting is over quoting, a ploy some agents use to win business. In this case, agents promise a vendor their house will fetch a price well above its market value, whether to convince them to sell or to beat others for the right to sell it. Once the contract is signed, the agent begins to groom the owner to accept a lower price. Adding even more insult to injury is the fact that many times property is actually sold for less than it is worth. This happens when the agent can not be bothered with the hard yakka to get, for example, an extra 5 per cent for their vendor. Such agents have a churn mentality, simply finding a price the owner will accept, selling the house and moving on to the next campaign.
Dirty little secret #3
Vendors can be cheated in another way too. Very naughty agents have been known to withhold good offers made before auction, even those well above the reserve, for several reasons. Sometimes, the offer comes through another agent at the firm and the original agent doesn't want to share commission. So, the bid is never put to the vendor or is put to them but at less than the real offer to be knocked back. Other times the agency wants to promote its brand by pushing ahead with the auction no matter what. It wants the vendor to spend the full amount on advertising because it is a lighthouse to attract other buyers and sellers to the business.
Dirty little secret #4
Now we get to the dummy tricks, used by agents who never outgrew their imaginary friends. Dummy offers are when agents claim to the vendor or buyer they have an offer that is purely fabrication. This tactic is used to make buyers increase their bid in a private sale or expression of interest campaign. It can also be used to groom vendors into accepting a lower price than they want. Remember, the agent wants to sell more than anything, to get their commission. If the agent has promised an unrealistic $1m for a property, a common trick is come back with a fake offer, say $800,000. The vendor will reject it but the process of talking down from their original expectation has started.
Dirty little secret #5
Dummy bidding is another old trick in the magic bag. While in the past it was normal for auctioneers to accept bids cast by street trees and passing pigeons when action was slow, these days it has become more sophisticated. Some very sneaky agents and vendors now enlist friends to cast fake bids that push prices up. Like under quoting, dummy bidding is popular because it works. And, it is almost impossible to prove, making it still very much a part of the real estate landscape.
Now the Top Five is done, but there is one last secret worth mentioning, possibly the worst kept secret of all. The visual trickery used in advertising photos is so endemic consumers are wise to it, in a big way. Lounge rooms are stretched, power lines removed and artificial sunlight beamed in, all thanks to some serious Photoshopping. A relatively new trick is the use of flashy display furniture that is actually made on a smaller scale than real furniture to tizz up an ordinary house and make the room look bigger.
Having revealed all of that, it is easy to see why real-estate agents have a collective reputation only slightly less murky than journalists. For what it is worth, I have dealt with many agents in the course of my duties and found most to be upstanding. Whether you can trust a journalist on that is up to you.
Thanks to buyers advocate David Morrell, from Morrell and Koren for his help with this list.
Marika Dobbin is The Age's Property Editor
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Banks muscle out smaller rivals in loans market
Peter Martin | The Age
July 14, 2009
AUSTRALIA'S banks have gained almost unrivalled dominance over the financial system, accounting for almost $90 of each $100 lent, an all-time high.
The market-share figures for May, covering personal loans, housing loans, commercial loans and lease finance came as Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner gave support to a new inquiry into the financial system.
Addressing international regulators in Sydney, Mr Tanner said the pace of financial innovation had now "outstripped the capacity" of regulators to keep up.
"The world has changed beyond recognition," he told the conference. "Whether we're talking about the United States or Australia, we need a regulatory regime that's appropriate for 2010 and beyond, not one that simply reinvents the past."
Australia's last inquiry into the financial system in 1996-97 took place at a time when competitors to the banks had a large and growing market share.
The May figures show the share of new loans issued by building societies, credit unions, wholesale lenders and finance companies fell to a record low 10.6 per cent, down from 15 per cent a year ago. The banks' share was a record 89.4 per cent, up from 85 per cent.
The banks' share of new mortgages climbed from 90 to 92 per cent and their share of motor vehicle and other lease finance jumped from 35 to 45 per cent.
Former Competition and Consumer Commissioner Stephen King said there was now a real question over the degree to which the Big Four banks "were keeping each other honest and were kept honest by facing competition".
"These figures show the smaller players are becoming less relevant as a constraint on the banks. We have a straight-out competition problem. The last 18 months have reversed a 20-year trend for the banks to face more competition," he said.
Professor King is one of the six public policy economists who last week petitioned Treasurer Wayne Swan, asking for a new inquiry into Australia's financial system.
"The last financial system inquiry was carried out against a background of the banks facing increasing constraints on their behaviour from emerging competitors, and that has turned around," he said.
"What the people who say we don't need an inquiry are ignoring is that the rest of the world is changing. In the UK and other countries the old rule book is being thrown out. We can't act as if we are an island."
On Sunday, Financial Services Minister Chris Bowen opened the door to a new financial system inquiry, saying he "would not rule out" such a review "at the appropriate time".
Mr Swan is believed to be open to the idea of an inquiry after the dust has settled on the financial crisis.
Mr Tanner said Australia's regulators had been vigilant in overseeing Australia's financial sector, but that it was clear that new international rules were needed.
New lending for housing hit a record high in May. The figures showed a sharp jump in borrowing for investment properties, suggesting that more investors were "positively gearing" to take advantage of high rents and low interest rates.
July 14, 2009
AUSTRALIA'S banks have gained almost unrivalled dominance over the financial system, accounting for almost $90 of each $100 lent, an all-time high.
The market-share figures for May, covering personal loans, housing loans, commercial loans and lease finance came as Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner gave support to a new inquiry into the financial system.
Addressing international regulators in Sydney, Mr Tanner said the pace of financial innovation had now "outstripped the capacity" of regulators to keep up.
"The world has changed beyond recognition," he told the conference. "Whether we're talking about the United States or Australia, we need a regulatory regime that's appropriate for 2010 and beyond, not one that simply reinvents the past."
Australia's last inquiry into the financial system in 1996-97 took place at a time when competitors to the banks had a large and growing market share.
The May figures show the share of new loans issued by building societies, credit unions, wholesale lenders and finance companies fell to a record low 10.6 per cent, down from 15 per cent a year ago. The banks' share was a record 89.4 per cent, up from 85 per cent.
The banks' share of new mortgages climbed from 90 to 92 per cent and their share of motor vehicle and other lease finance jumped from 35 to 45 per cent.
Former Competition and Consumer Commissioner Stephen King said there was now a real question over the degree to which the Big Four banks "were keeping each other honest and were kept honest by facing competition".
"These figures show the smaller players are becoming less relevant as a constraint on the banks. We have a straight-out competition problem. The last 18 months have reversed a 20-year trend for the banks to face more competition," he said.
Professor King is one of the six public policy economists who last week petitioned Treasurer Wayne Swan, asking for a new inquiry into Australia's financial system.
"The last financial system inquiry was carried out against a background of the banks facing increasing constraints on their behaviour from emerging competitors, and that has turned around," he said.
"What the people who say we don't need an inquiry are ignoring is that the rest of the world is changing. In the UK and other countries the old rule book is being thrown out. We can't act as if we are an island."
On Sunday, Financial Services Minister Chris Bowen opened the door to a new financial system inquiry, saying he "would not rule out" such a review "at the appropriate time".
Mr Swan is believed to be open to the idea of an inquiry after the dust has settled on the financial crisis.
Mr Tanner said Australia's regulators had been vigilant in overseeing Australia's financial sector, but that it was clear that new international rules were needed.
New lending for housing hit a record high in May. The figures showed a sharp jump in borrowing for investment properties, suggesting that more investors were "positively gearing" to take advantage of high rents and low interest rates.
Monday, July 13, 2009
COAG needs dose of political Viagra
Mike Steketee | July 11, 2009
Article from: The Australian
WOULD you like to earn a lazy $2.4 billion? That's a year. It's Kevin Rudd's latest get-rich-quick scheme. On second thoughts, hold the quick part. And, unfortunately, it would have to be shared with 22 million other Australians. Still, in these straitened times, why look a gift horse in the mouth?
After his latest meeting with premiers and chief ministers last week, the Prime Minister announced another breakthrough in his project to fix the federation. The breakthroughs at the Council of Australian Governments came so thick and fast that this one barely rated a mention in the media. Rudd and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese said the meeting had agreed to "historic" reforms to streamline transport regulations that "have the potential to boost national income by as much as $2.4bn a year". There would be a single national regulator for trucks, covering areas such as inspection standards, safe driving hours, weight limits and registration.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority would become the national regulator of all commercial vessels operating in Australian waters, not just those that travel between states, as now. And there would be a national rail safety system.
What good ideas. Trucks have been travelling interstate for many years but still have to comply with all sorts of different rules when they cross borders. Trains don't stop at state borders either, at least not since the extension of the standard gauge, but nevertheless Australia has seven rail safety regulators and three rail safety investigators. Considering the US, with 50 states, has had one body responsible for rail safety since 1932 and there has been a European rail authority to harmonise the regulations of 23 countries since 2004, such a reform in Australia is, in the words of Rudd and Albanese, long overdue.
The cost of the tonnes of red tape, the duplication and the conflicting rules covering not only transport but scores of other areas add up to multiples of the $2.4bn on offer in transport. Clearing these thickets can provide a significant boost to productivity. According to Business Council of Australia president Greig Gailey, the progress COAG makes over the next 18 months in implementing such long-term reforms will determine Australia's prosperity for the next decade.
But before we get carried away with the euphoria, it pays to apply a reality check. Heads of government like to have so-called announceables following COAG meetings, but experience suggests these announcements should not always be taken at face value. The first niggling doubt emerges with a short sentence at the end of the Rudd-Albanese statement: "It is proposed that all reforms will be fully implemented by 2013." That suggests there are just a few wrinkles to be ironed out. More than a few, as it turns out.
What the COAG meeting actually achieved on rail safety last week was to put the reforms into reverse, with the potential, believe it or not, for Australia to end up with more safety regulators than it has now.
A meeting of commonwealth and state transport ministers in May signed off on a single national rail safety regulator to "provide a one-stop shop for all those operating in and on our rail networks", as the statement issued at the time said. Victoria subsequently had second thoughts when the state's transport bureaucrats raised concerns. Did Victoria really want a national body determining safety issues on Melbourne's trams and trains? What if that resulted in a demand that Victoria spend billions of dollars on its rail systems to comply with national rules?
The advisers were persuasive enough for Premier John Brumby to take the objections first to a meeting with his state and territory counterparts, and then to COAG last week. Instead of telling Brumby where to get off, Rudd meekly went along. As a result - and contrary to the misleading Rudd-Albanese announcement - COAG failed to agree on a single national regulator. In the words of the detail buried deep in the COAG communique, there will be "further consideration of the scope and form of the regulator following receipt of advice at the end of 2009 from the standing committee on transport on specific safety requirements within jurisdictions, especially in relation to urban systems and the interface with interstate and freight operations". You can bet the Victorian bureaucrats had a celebratory cappuccino after that one.
In plain English, what the communique means is that the Victorians want their own regulator for metropolitan rail. The other states may start thinking what's good for Victoria will do them nicely, as well. As Bryan Nye, chief executive of the industry body the Australasian Rail Association, puts it, under the Victorian proposals "we will end up with a bigger mess than we have now". Take a freight train carrying grain from rural Victoria to Geelong. Part of its journey is on the Melbourne metropolitan network, where it could come under the jurisdiction of the metropolitan regulator as well as the national one. "Sheer madness," Nye says.
Still, nothing much surprises Nye and others in the rail industry. Administration of the railways is a metaphor for everything that is wrong with the Australian federation. The reforms on rail safety are as blindingly obvious as a uniform rail gauge, but that doesn't stop them being next to impossible to achieve.
Federal and state governments reached agreement as long ago as 1996 on the need for "a cost-effective, nationally consistent approach to railway safety". In 1999, an independent review commissioned by governments recommended a single national rail safety regulator, a finding since echoed by the Productivity Commission and the National Transport Commission. In 2006, COAG identified as one of six hot spots warranting priority action the harmonisation of rail and road regulation, including safety. All governments are supposed to have passed national rail safety legislation two years ago but most missed the deadline and Tasmania and the Northern Territory have not yet gotten around to introducing their bills. The acts that have passed all include variations from the national model. For example, NSW decided it would require two drivers on interstate freight trains, meaning that an extra driver has to be sent to Victoria or South Australia to get on board before trains cross into NSW. It would be funny if it weren't so serious.
Fixing the federation is one of Rudd's professed priorities and he calls COAG "the workhorse of the nation". There has indeed been progress but it has been more in the process than in terms of achievements. As public servants present and former from Rudd down will tell you, the right structure has to be put in place and it is the result that matters.
But in some areas, such as managing the Murray-Darling Basin, time is running out and the delays are causing real harm. There has been no end to the benchmarks and goals and interim targets for tackling everything from indigenous disadvantage and homelessness to standardising business reporting, but precious little yet in real resources on the ground.
In transport, agreement on a single regulator for trucks is significant, as are new heavy vehicle user charges. But like many other issues, including uniform national occupational health and safety laws for businesses operating across state boundaries, the timetable has slipped. The operation of the new arrangements is often years away and compromises have cast doubt on the eventual result.
What COAG needs is a good dose of political Viagra. If that doesn't work, Rudd should drop the nice guy approach and flex some of the commonwealth's muscle. If Victoria is so keen on fencing off its metropolitan rail system from big bad government in Canberra, then Rudd may like to suggest that it do without the commonwealth funding as well, including the $3.2bn being kicked in for a new express line from Werribee to the city. Then we would quickly find out states' rights, too, have their limits.
Article from: The Australian
WOULD you like to earn a lazy $2.4 billion? That's a year. It's Kevin Rudd's latest get-rich-quick scheme. On second thoughts, hold the quick part. And, unfortunately, it would have to be shared with 22 million other Australians. Still, in these straitened times, why look a gift horse in the mouth?
After his latest meeting with premiers and chief ministers last week, the Prime Minister announced another breakthrough in his project to fix the federation. The breakthroughs at the Council of Australian Governments came so thick and fast that this one barely rated a mention in the media. Rudd and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese said the meeting had agreed to "historic" reforms to streamline transport regulations that "have the potential to boost national income by as much as $2.4bn a year". There would be a single national regulator for trucks, covering areas such as inspection standards, safe driving hours, weight limits and registration.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority would become the national regulator of all commercial vessels operating in Australian waters, not just those that travel between states, as now. And there would be a national rail safety system.
What good ideas. Trucks have been travelling interstate for many years but still have to comply with all sorts of different rules when they cross borders. Trains don't stop at state borders either, at least not since the extension of the standard gauge, but nevertheless Australia has seven rail safety regulators and three rail safety investigators. Considering the US, with 50 states, has had one body responsible for rail safety since 1932 and there has been a European rail authority to harmonise the regulations of 23 countries since 2004, such a reform in Australia is, in the words of Rudd and Albanese, long overdue.
The cost of the tonnes of red tape, the duplication and the conflicting rules covering not only transport but scores of other areas add up to multiples of the $2.4bn on offer in transport. Clearing these thickets can provide a significant boost to productivity. According to Business Council of Australia president Greig Gailey, the progress COAG makes over the next 18 months in implementing such long-term reforms will determine Australia's prosperity for the next decade.
But before we get carried away with the euphoria, it pays to apply a reality check. Heads of government like to have so-called announceables following COAG meetings, but experience suggests these announcements should not always be taken at face value. The first niggling doubt emerges with a short sentence at the end of the Rudd-Albanese statement: "It is proposed that all reforms will be fully implemented by 2013." That suggests there are just a few wrinkles to be ironed out. More than a few, as it turns out.
What the COAG meeting actually achieved on rail safety last week was to put the reforms into reverse, with the potential, believe it or not, for Australia to end up with more safety regulators than it has now.
A meeting of commonwealth and state transport ministers in May signed off on a single national rail safety regulator to "provide a one-stop shop for all those operating in and on our rail networks", as the statement issued at the time said. Victoria subsequently had second thoughts when the state's transport bureaucrats raised concerns. Did Victoria really want a national body determining safety issues on Melbourne's trams and trains? What if that resulted in a demand that Victoria spend billions of dollars on its rail systems to comply with national rules?
The advisers were persuasive enough for Premier John Brumby to take the objections first to a meeting with his state and territory counterparts, and then to COAG last week. Instead of telling Brumby where to get off, Rudd meekly went along. As a result - and contrary to the misleading Rudd-Albanese announcement - COAG failed to agree on a single national regulator. In the words of the detail buried deep in the COAG communique, there will be "further consideration of the scope and form of the regulator following receipt of advice at the end of 2009 from the standing committee on transport on specific safety requirements within jurisdictions, especially in relation to urban systems and the interface with interstate and freight operations". You can bet the Victorian bureaucrats had a celebratory cappuccino after that one.
In plain English, what the communique means is that the Victorians want their own regulator for metropolitan rail. The other states may start thinking what's good for Victoria will do them nicely, as well. As Bryan Nye, chief executive of the industry body the Australasian Rail Association, puts it, under the Victorian proposals "we will end up with a bigger mess than we have now". Take a freight train carrying grain from rural Victoria to Geelong. Part of its journey is on the Melbourne metropolitan network, where it could come under the jurisdiction of the metropolitan regulator as well as the national one. "Sheer madness," Nye says.
Still, nothing much surprises Nye and others in the rail industry. Administration of the railways is a metaphor for everything that is wrong with the Australian federation. The reforms on rail safety are as blindingly obvious as a uniform rail gauge, but that doesn't stop them being next to impossible to achieve.
Federal and state governments reached agreement as long ago as 1996 on the need for "a cost-effective, nationally consistent approach to railway safety". In 1999, an independent review commissioned by governments recommended a single national rail safety regulator, a finding since echoed by the Productivity Commission and the National Transport Commission. In 2006, COAG identified as one of six hot spots warranting priority action the harmonisation of rail and road regulation, including safety. All governments are supposed to have passed national rail safety legislation two years ago but most missed the deadline and Tasmania and the Northern Territory have not yet gotten around to introducing their bills. The acts that have passed all include variations from the national model. For example, NSW decided it would require two drivers on interstate freight trains, meaning that an extra driver has to be sent to Victoria or South Australia to get on board before trains cross into NSW. It would be funny if it weren't so serious.
Fixing the federation is one of Rudd's professed priorities and he calls COAG "the workhorse of the nation". There has indeed been progress but it has been more in the process than in terms of achievements. As public servants present and former from Rudd down will tell you, the right structure has to be put in place and it is the result that matters.
But in some areas, such as managing the Murray-Darling Basin, time is running out and the delays are causing real harm. There has been no end to the benchmarks and goals and interim targets for tackling everything from indigenous disadvantage and homelessness to standardising business reporting, but precious little yet in real resources on the ground.
In transport, agreement on a single regulator for trucks is significant, as are new heavy vehicle user charges. But like many other issues, including uniform national occupational health and safety laws for businesses operating across state boundaries, the timetable has slipped. The operation of the new arrangements is often years away and compromises have cast doubt on the eventual result.
What COAG needs is a good dose of political Viagra. If that doesn't work, Rudd should drop the nice guy approach and flex some of the commonwealth's muscle. If Victoria is so keen on fencing off its metropolitan rail system from big bad government in Canberra, then Rudd may like to suggest that it do without the commonwealth funding as well, including the $3.2bn being kicked in for a new express line from Werribee to the city. Then we would quickly find out states' rights, too, have their limits.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Online real estate market poised for battle as Google moves in
July 10, 2009 - 5:01PM The Age
It's shaping up as a battle of the online giants.
In one corner are the current champions of Australia's online real estate classifieds, realestate.com.au and Domain, and in the other corner is the challenger Google.
And there's no need for introductions.
While more than 90 per cent of Australians online use Google, the popular search engine is now looking to enter the property search market.
In Australia, that market is dominated by realestate.com.au and Domain. (Domain is owned by Fairfax Media, also the owner of My Small Business.)
Those sites received visits from 22 per cent and 14 per cent respectively of online Australians between March and May, according to Nielsen Online.
So far, realestate.com.au - part of REA Group Ltd and majority owned by News Limited - has only really had to worry about Fairfax's Domain nipping at its heels.
REA chief executive Greg Ellis, who is in his first year at the helm after former CEO Simon Baker's abrupt departure last year, has played down the threat to the realestate.com.au business and told AAP he welcomed the competition.
"It's a fairly rudimentary service," Mr Ellis said of the Google initiative.
"Google's a very good company, it is competition, but we welcome competition because it makes us stay focused for our customers and consumers.
"Our position in the marketplace is very strong - we are the market leader in online real estate."
Both Domain and realestate.com.au also rely to varying degrees on their links ranking well on Google's search results page to attract users to click through to their sites.
Ranking on page one is a virtual goldmine of "clicks".
Google keeps its magic formula to achieve those rankings - or what those in the business call search engine optimisation (SEO) - a closely guarded secret.
Now, with Google's entry into the online property classifieds game, Fairfax general manager of classifieds John Brand said it was like putting "Dracula in charge of the blood bank".
Mr Brand said they too welcomed the competition, but described Google as a search engine and not a property portal like Domain and realestate.com.au.
Domain also has both a print and online classified offering, which neither Google nor REA have, he said.
"At this particular point in time we'll watch very closely - time will tell - but from the agents' point of view we are a one-stop-shop that Google can never compete with," Mr Brand said.
Former REA boss Mr Baker said Google posed no real threat because its free listings would open the door to spam and fake listings.
"Just because it's Google doesn't mean it's going to win," Mr Baker said.
"The realestate.com.aus and Domains of the world, because they (real estate agents) pay to advertise, will have higher quality listings.
"Google will be able to drive traffic there, but they will drive traffic through to a combination of real listings and a combination of old listings, and a combination of some not real listings (spam and fake listings)."
Director of analytics at Nielsen Online, Mark Higginson, said the success of Google will depend upon the site's usability and its relationship with real estate agents, which is where realestate.com.au and Domain are clear leaders.
"Consumers initially only need to be able to decide between properties based on certain criteria, where it is, what does it look like, they're not going to buy a property based on pictures on a website," Mr Higginson said.
"So that's where realestate(.com.au) and Domain have that current advantage, by having the relationships with the real estate agents.
"And it's the real estate agents that sell properties - not the website."
Google now enables property searches through its Google Maps platform.
"We think people will really start to look at these listings a lot online within Google Maps and then click through to individual agency websites when they've found a property they're after," product manager Andrew Foster said.
Google has come into the market while it is in a downturn.
The realestate.com.au boss, Mr Ellis, said the downturn had driven real estate agents online to save money.
Mr Ellis describes the shift from print to online as a "seachange" that would normally have taken years to achieve.
So, is now a good time to buy into the property market?
The downturn in the economy has made housing more affordable, but Mr Ellis said the price of the property is not the issue, it's whether the buyer can afford it.
"But with inflation being relatively low and interest rates low, that would suggest it's a good time to buy," he said.
The federal government's stimulus package had also helped the under-$500,000 market with the extension of the first home buyer grant, he said, while the general economic stimulus has also allowed more money to go into the economy, which has offset the drop in consumer confidence.
"From an overall perspective, the evidence to date would suggest the stimulus has done a good job in weathering the economic storm," Mr Ellis said.
If consumer confidence and retail figures dropped, there may be an argument for another stimulus, he said.
The company has clawed back its international operations in Britain and New Zealand to focus on its Australian business and is planning to release a number of new products to the market.
Mr Ellis said the group had cut back its international operations but this had nothing to do with the global economic downturn.
"Our decision to focus on Australia was nothing to do with the global financial crisis ... (but) that there is a lot more profitable growth to happen in Australia," he said.
"We were spending too much time in the overseas businesses and not enough time in Australia.
"We've accepted now that we are not an international company - we're an Australian company with overseas operations."
Mr Ellis declined to comment on whether REA would withdraw from the United Arab Emirates but said the company remained committed to the businesses in Italy, Luxembourg and Hong Kong.
So, while REA refocuses on its Australian operations, Google's focus is clearly on moving into realestate.com.au's domain.
AAP
It's shaping up as a battle of the online giants.
In one corner are the current champions of Australia's online real estate classifieds, realestate.com.au and Domain, and in the other corner is the challenger Google.
And there's no need for introductions.
While more than 90 per cent of Australians online use Google, the popular search engine is now looking to enter the property search market.
In Australia, that market is dominated by realestate.com.au and Domain. (Domain is owned by Fairfax Media, also the owner of My Small Business.)
Those sites received visits from 22 per cent and 14 per cent respectively of online Australians between March and May, according to Nielsen Online.
So far, realestate.com.au - part of REA Group Ltd and majority owned by News Limited - has only really had to worry about Fairfax's Domain nipping at its heels.
REA chief executive Greg Ellis, who is in his first year at the helm after former CEO Simon Baker's abrupt departure last year, has played down the threat to the realestate.com.au business and told AAP he welcomed the competition.
"It's a fairly rudimentary service," Mr Ellis said of the Google initiative.
"Google's a very good company, it is competition, but we welcome competition because it makes us stay focused for our customers and consumers.
"Our position in the marketplace is very strong - we are the market leader in online real estate."
Both Domain and realestate.com.au also rely to varying degrees on their links ranking well on Google's search results page to attract users to click through to their sites.
Ranking on page one is a virtual goldmine of "clicks".
Google keeps its magic formula to achieve those rankings - or what those in the business call search engine optimisation (SEO) - a closely guarded secret.
Now, with Google's entry into the online property classifieds game, Fairfax general manager of classifieds John Brand said it was like putting "Dracula in charge of the blood bank".
Mr Brand said they too welcomed the competition, but described Google as a search engine and not a property portal like Domain and realestate.com.au.
Domain also has both a print and online classified offering, which neither Google nor REA have, he said.
"At this particular point in time we'll watch very closely - time will tell - but from the agents' point of view we are a one-stop-shop that Google can never compete with," Mr Brand said.
Former REA boss Mr Baker said Google posed no real threat because its free listings would open the door to spam and fake listings.
"Just because it's Google doesn't mean it's going to win," Mr Baker said.
"The realestate.com.aus and Domains of the world, because they (real estate agents) pay to advertise, will have higher quality listings.
"Google will be able to drive traffic there, but they will drive traffic through to a combination of real listings and a combination of old listings, and a combination of some not real listings (spam and fake listings)."
Director of analytics at Nielsen Online, Mark Higginson, said the success of Google will depend upon the site's usability and its relationship with real estate agents, which is where realestate.com.au and Domain are clear leaders.
"Consumers initially only need to be able to decide between properties based on certain criteria, where it is, what does it look like, they're not going to buy a property based on pictures on a website," Mr Higginson said.
"So that's where realestate(.com.au) and Domain have that current advantage, by having the relationships with the real estate agents.
"And it's the real estate agents that sell properties - not the website."
Google now enables property searches through its Google Maps platform.
"We think people will really start to look at these listings a lot online within Google Maps and then click through to individual agency websites when they've found a property they're after," product manager Andrew Foster said.
Google has come into the market while it is in a downturn.
The realestate.com.au boss, Mr Ellis, said the downturn had driven real estate agents online to save money.
Mr Ellis describes the shift from print to online as a "seachange" that would normally have taken years to achieve.
So, is now a good time to buy into the property market?
The downturn in the economy has made housing more affordable, but Mr Ellis said the price of the property is not the issue, it's whether the buyer can afford it.
"But with inflation being relatively low and interest rates low, that would suggest it's a good time to buy," he said.
The federal government's stimulus package had also helped the under-$500,000 market with the extension of the first home buyer grant, he said, while the general economic stimulus has also allowed more money to go into the economy, which has offset the drop in consumer confidence.
"From an overall perspective, the evidence to date would suggest the stimulus has done a good job in weathering the economic storm," Mr Ellis said.
If consumer confidence and retail figures dropped, there may be an argument for another stimulus, he said.
The company has clawed back its international operations in Britain and New Zealand to focus on its Australian business and is planning to release a number of new products to the market.
Mr Ellis said the group had cut back its international operations but this had nothing to do with the global economic downturn.
"Our decision to focus on Australia was nothing to do with the global financial crisis ... (but) that there is a lot more profitable growth to happen in Australia," he said.
"We were spending too much time in the overseas businesses and not enough time in Australia.
"We've accepted now that we are not an international company - we're an Australian company with overseas operations."
Mr Ellis declined to comment on whether REA would withdraw from the United Arab Emirates but said the company remained committed to the businesses in Italy, Luxembourg and Hong Kong.
So, while REA refocuses on its Australian operations, Google's focus is clearly on moving into realestate.com.au's domain.
AAP
Thursday, July 09, 2009
ANZ whispers: 'jobs gone'
ANOTHER day, another round of job cuts at ANZ, where boss Mike Smith seems hell-bent on ensuring the bank's name stands for "Asia and New Zealand Banking Group".
Yesterday 248 staff were given marching orders in nearly every major city, bar Melbourne, as the bank consolidated its "mortgage fulfilment centres".
These staff do the work whenever someone is approved for a mortgage with ANZ. They collect documents, process deeds and ensure settlement occurs on the due date for what is usually the biggest and most emotional purchase a bank customer will make.
For the growing chorus of disgruntled executives at ANZ — the people who blew the lid on the latest cuts and forced the bank into an early media announcement — this decision is symptomatic of the culture that arrived with Smith. It's a culture, they say, that puts the core Australian business and customers in the back seat.
ANZ's chief media flack, Paul Edwards, was on leave for the announcement, which the bank didn't expect to leak to the media. Given the size of previous cuts — 800 middle-management jobs in December, and confirmation in March that 500 jobs had been outsourced to India — the latest figure of 248 staff gone was also deemed to be small.
ANZ staff tell Full Disclosure they have been instructed not to talk to the media, but the latest cuts have loosened some lips. "They keep telling us that no customer-facing jobs will go, that the majority of job losses will be backroom staff," said one. "I can understand moving jobs to Bangalore if there is a better outcome for customers, or at least no effect on the outcome, but how can processing a mortgage overseas, in a different time zone, be a better outcome?
"Different states have different laws. A mortgage is the most emotional purchase our customers ever make. Now, if there is a query from a person in Sydney, they will see their bank manager, who will talk to someone in Melbourne, who will deal with someone in Bangalore. Second, third, even fourth parties will be involved in the process."
The decision to centralise mortgage services was taken after an internal review. A high-level source at the bank said the review decided to outsource much of the work to Bangalore and specialists such as Iron Mountain purely on the basis of cost, not customer service.
There's no doubt the cuts have been deep at ANZ. Last month the bank announced a $10 million package negotiated with the Financial Services Union to retrain staff affected by job cuts, called the New Career Training Fund.
The media release issued by Edwards for that included a "note for editors" stating that "since 2003, employment at ANZ in Australia has risen by over 3500 full-time roles from 16,400 to 19,922 full-time staff as at the end of March 2009".
It was clever spin, befitting Yes Minister or The Hollowmen. Another way of putting it is, since September last year, the number of full-time jobs at ANZ has been cut from 20,364 to fewer than 19,700 and is the lowest level since 2003, with more cuts to come.
Since 2003, the number of people employed in Bangalore has risen from fewer than 500 to more than 3500.
Even at head office, institutional bankers complain about the cutbacks.
"An assistant manager leaves, a graduate steps in, and the position is filled," Full Disclosure was told. "It happens all over the bank and, while some of the kids might be good, they are just not ready for the responsibilities they are being given."
Rod Masson, director of policy for the FSU, says the workload given to inexperienced employees is major complaint from ANZ staff. "It's called 'survivor syndrome'," Masson says. "It's not just people complaining about doing more work. There's just as much concern about the impact job cuts have had on customers."
Next on the list for outsourcing, according to sources at ANZ, is the Private Bank, located in the famous old neo-gothic building on the corner of Collins and Queen streets. It services the bank's cherished high-net-worth customers. Again, no "customer-facing roles", as the bank likes to put it, will be cut.
"It's behind-the-scenes roles that will be sent to India," Full Disclosure was told — by the same sources that informed us of the latest job cuts. "Management is desperate for customers not to know, to be under the impression that nothing has changed, but it's all changing."
Even some of ANZ's more charitable programs are facing cuts. Its Given the Chance program was a partnership with the Brotherhood of St Laurence to give refugees a chance to launch a career. Last year four were given jobs — all with the mortgage services business that has now been axed.
"It's more than symbolic," said one senior banker. "If they want a career with ANZ, they're in the wrong country."
FULL DISCLOSURE / MARK HAWTHORNE | The Age
July 9, 2009
Yesterday 248 staff were given marching orders in nearly every major city, bar Melbourne, as the bank consolidated its "mortgage fulfilment centres".
These staff do the work whenever someone is approved for a mortgage with ANZ. They collect documents, process deeds and ensure settlement occurs on the due date for what is usually the biggest and most emotional purchase a bank customer will make.
For the growing chorus of disgruntled executives at ANZ — the people who blew the lid on the latest cuts and forced the bank into an early media announcement — this decision is symptomatic of the culture that arrived with Smith. It's a culture, they say, that puts the core Australian business and customers in the back seat.
ANZ's chief media flack, Paul Edwards, was on leave for the announcement, which the bank didn't expect to leak to the media. Given the size of previous cuts — 800 middle-management jobs in December, and confirmation in March that 500 jobs had been outsourced to India — the latest figure of 248 staff gone was also deemed to be small.
ANZ staff tell Full Disclosure they have been instructed not to talk to the media, but the latest cuts have loosened some lips. "They keep telling us that no customer-facing jobs will go, that the majority of job losses will be backroom staff," said one. "I can understand moving jobs to Bangalore if there is a better outcome for customers, or at least no effect on the outcome, but how can processing a mortgage overseas, in a different time zone, be a better outcome?
"Different states have different laws. A mortgage is the most emotional purchase our customers ever make. Now, if there is a query from a person in Sydney, they will see their bank manager, who will talk to someone in Melbourne, who will deal with someone in Bangalore. Second, third, even fourth parties will be involved in the process."
The decision to centralise mortgage services was taken after an internal review. A high-level source at the bank said the review decided to outsource much of the work to Bangalore and specialists such as Iron Mountain purely on the basis of cost, not customer service.
There's no doubt the cuts have been deep at ANZ. Last month the bank announced a $10 million package negotiated with the Financial Services Union to retrain staff affected by job cuts, called the New Career Training Fund.
The media release issued by Edwards for that included a "note for editors" stating that "since 2003, employment at ANZ in Australia has risen by over 3500 full-time roles from 16,400 to 19,922 full-time staff as at the end of March 2009".
It was clever spin, befitting Yes Minister or The Hollowmen. Another way of putting it is, since September last year, the number of full-time jobs at ANZ has been cut from 20,364 to fewer than 19,700 and is the lowest level since 2003, with more cuts to come.
Since 2003, the number of people employed in Bangalore has risen from fewer than 500 to more than 3500.
Even at head office, institutional bankers complain about the cutbacks.
"An assistant manager leaves, a graduate steps in, and the position is filled," Full Disclosure was told. "It happens all over the bank and, while some of the kids might be good, they are just not ready for the responsibilities they are being given."
Rod Masson, director of policy for the FSU, says the workload given to inexperienced employees is major complaint from ANZ staff. "It's called 'survivor syndrome'," Masson says. "It's not just people complaining about doing more work. There's just as much concern about the impact job cuts have had on customers."
Next on the list for outsourcing, according to sources at ANZ, is the Private Bank, located in the famous old neo-gothic building on the corner of Collins and Queen streets. It services the bank's cherished high-net-worth customers. Again, no "customer-facing roles", as the bank likes to put it, will be cut.
"It's behind-the-scenes roles that will be sent to India," Full Disclosure was told — by the same sources that informed us of the latest job cuts. "Management is desperate for customers not to know, to be under the impression that nothing has changed, but it's all changing."
Even some of ANZ's more charitable programs are facing cuts. Its Given the Chance program was a partnership with the Brotherhood of St Laurence to give refugees a chance to launch a career. Last year four were given jobs — all with the mortgage services business that has now been axed.
"It's more than symbolic," said one senior banker. "If they want a career with ANZ, they're in the wrong country."
FULL DISCLOSURE / MARK HAWTHORNE | The Age
July 9, 2009
ANZ slashes another 248 jobs
ANZ Bank has axed a further 248 jobs across the country as part of its strategy to slash the size of its Australian workforce.
Yesterday afternoon staff at ANZ's mortgage fulfilment centres in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart were told their jobs would be outsourced.
The centres have been key to the bank's Given the Chance program, a partnership run with the Brotherhood of St Laurence to provide newly arrived refugees with work, raising concerns that several will lose their jobs.
Staff at the centres process documents and settle mortgages for thousands of customers who have financed a house purchase with the bank.
An ANZ spokeswoman said about 150 jobs would be outsourced to companies such as US-based Iron Horse, which specialises in processing such documents. A further 40 jobs will be moved to the bank's technology and operations centre in Bangalore.
The 45 staff working at the mortgage fulfilment office in Melbourne were told there would be "minimal" job losses as they would now have to settle mortgages from interstate.
A further 50 jobs will be created in Melbourne to cope with that increased workload, and some existing staff from interstate will be given the chance to relocate.
The Financial Services Union slammed the job losses.
"What we are seeing here is a very profitable bank in Australia that is failing its employees at a very difficult time, when they should be trying to provide some job security," union policy director Rod Masson said.
In December last year, ANZ announced that 800 middle-management jobs would be cut as part of its One ANZ restructuring program. In March this year the bank said almost 500 jobs had been relocated to Bangalore in the past year.
Since September 2008, the number of full-time Australian staff employed by ANZ has fallen from 20,364 to fewer than 19,700 — its lowest level since 2003. Since 2003, the number of full-time employees at ANZ's Bangalore outpost has increased from fewer than 400 to more than 3500.
According to a source at the bank, 10 people have been employed under the Given the Chance program in the past two years. Many of these now face the prospect of losing their job.
Mark Hawthorne | The Age
July 9, 2009
Yesterday afternoon staff at ANZ's mortgage fulfilment centres in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart were told their jobs would be outsourced.
The centres have been key to the bank's Given the Chance program, a partnership run with the Brotherhood of St Laurence to provide newly arrived refugees with work, raising concerns that several will lose their jobs.
Staff at the centres process documents and settle mortgages for thousands of customers who have financed a house purchase with the bank.
An ANZ spokeswoman said about 150 jobs would be outsourced to companies such as US-based Iron Horse, which specialises in processing such documents. A further 40 jobs will be moved to the bank's technology and operations centre in Bangalore.
The 45 staff working at the mortgage fulfilment office in Melbourne were told there would be "minimal" job losses as they would now have to settle mortgages from interstate.
A further 50 jobs will be created in Melbourne to cope with that increased workload, and some existing staff from interstate will be given the chance to relocate.
The Financial Services Union slammed the job losses.
"What we are seeing here is a very profitable bank in Australia that is failing its employees at a very difficult time, when they should be trying to provide some job security," union policy director Rod Masson said.
In December last year, ANZ announced that 800 middle-management jobs would be cut as part of its One ANZ restructuring program. In March this year the bank said almost 500 jobs had been relocated to Bangalore in the past year.
Since September 2008, the number of full-time Australian staff employed by ANZ has fallen from 20,364 to fewer than 19,700 — its lowest level since 2003. Since 2003, the number of full-time employees at ANZ's Bangalore outpost has increased from fewer than 400 to more than 3500.
According to a source at the bank, 10 people have been employed under the Given the Chance program in the past two years. Many of these now face the prospect of losing their job.
Mark Hawthorne | The Age
July 9, 2009
Sunday, July 05, 2009
The sick feeling of finding out you don't exist
Identity Theft
Cameron Stewart | July 04, 2009
Article from: The Australian
ADELAIDE schoolteacher Ginetta Rossi remembers feeling nauseous when told by authorities that she no longer officially existed.
Rossi, a primary school teacher of 20 years, was renewing her teacher's registration in Adelaide when she discovered that both her identity and her career qualifications had been stolen.
"They told me that their teaching records showed Ginetta Rossi had moved to Victoria the previous year," Rossi recalls.
"I told them I was Ginetta Rossi but they wouldn't believe me."
To make matters worse, when Rossi investigated further, she found that the woman who stole her identity was Renai Brochard, the partner of her former husband.
"I felt sick," says Rossi, who has agreed to speak publicly about her case for the first time.
"It would have been bad enough for someone off the street to steal my identity but this was my ex-husband's partner.
"I thought, 'who is going to believe me?"'
Rossi was a victim of what police say is the vogue crime of the new millennium: identity fraud. A staggering 124,000 Australians each year wake up one day to find that their identity has been stolen.
A further 383,300 also become victims of partial identity theft through credit card fraud.
Identity fraud, which costs Australians up to $4billion a year, is growing rapidly as criminals plunder our personal details from the internet, from rubbish bins, and from online chat rooms in order to adopt our identity. The problem has forced the government to launch new policies to fight the trend.
Attorney-General Robert McClelland told The Weekend Australian: "Identity security is central to Australia's national security, law enforcement and economic interests and vital in protecting Australian citizens from the theft or misuse of their identities."
Victims can lose their life savings or find debt-collectors on their doorstep for debts they did not accrue. Because it involves an invasion of privacy, it can also leave psychological scars.
In the case of Rossi, her loss of identity created ripple effects across two states. While police were investigating the identity theft, she was instructed not to tell anyone.
"I was freaking out thinking 'what if she has done something wrong using my name?'," she says.
Rossi's fears were well founded. By the time she discovered her identity had been stolen, Brochard - now registered in Victoria as teacher Ginetta Rossi - was causing havoc in an exclusive Melbourne private primary school.
Parents at that school, the Melbourne Montessori School, were complaining that the teacher of their six-year-old children did not appear to know the first thing about teaching.
But the school did not believe them for many months and continued to back the fake teacher. It was only when the real Rossi went to police that the whistle was blown on Brochard, who had been teaching at the $7000-a-year school for a full year. The saga ended last year when Brochard was convicted of deception and given a three-month suspended jail term.
But it continues to have an impact on the school, which became the subject of a full-scale review by the authorities and is awaiting a decision from Victorian authorities on whether it retains its registration.
Brochard, meanwhile, returned to South Australia and was employed by an Adelaide childcare centre that was not aware she was a convicted fraudster. She was sacked last October after her identity became known, prompting the South Australian government to order a review into how she was cleared by authorities to work at the Woodcroft childcare centre.
South Australian Early Childhood Development Minister Jay Weatherill this week declined to answer questions from The Weekend Australian about the outcome of that review. Brochard could not be contacted for comment.
Rossi says one of the most distressing aspects of losing her identity was convincing sceptical authorities that she was the real Ginetta Rossi.
"It was initially hard to get people to believe that I was who I said I was," she says. "I remember the look on the poor policewoman's face when I told her, 'I'm here to report identity fraud, I believe my ex-partner's partner has stolen my identity.' She must have thought I was a fruit-loop."
Brochard stole Rossi's identity by telling the Teachers Registration Board of South Australia she was Rossi and that she had lost her registration certificate and needed a duplicate copy.
Brochard then provided a false statutory declaration of her identity to convince authorities to give her a copy of the certificate, which they did.
She then moved to Victoria but when she applied to the Victorian Institute of Teaching to be registered in the state her fake application was shoddy. Brochard misspelled Ginetta on some registration documents and had whited out her name and replaced it with Rossi on her birth certificate.
Despite this, the VIT did not pick up the faults and agreed to register Brochard as a teacher.
Rossi was luckier than most victims of identity fraud in that Brochard did not steal her tax file number or gain access to her bank accounts. A report on identity crime by the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General last year said many victims lost not only their savings but also their personal credit ratings.
"Individual victims of identity crime spend an average of two or more years attempting to fix their credit report and restore their credit rating," the report says.
An increasingly common form of stealing people's personal details is through so-called "phishing emails", in which fake emails purporting to be from trusted institutions like banks ask people to provide personal details.
This week the Australian Federal Police warned of the circulation of a scam email that falsely claimed to be from the AFP and requested personal and financial information.
Arguably the fastest-growing area of identity fraud is via websites such as Facebook and chat rooms. Research conducted by the National Cyber Security Alliance reveals 74 per cent of social networking users divulge personal information such as email addresses, names and birthdays.
Cameron Stewart | July 04, 2009
Article from: The Australian
ADELAIDE schoolteacher Ginetta Rossi remembers feeling nauseous when told by authorities that she no longer officially existed.
Rossi, a primary school teacher of 20 years, was renewing her teacher's registration in Adelaide when she discovered that both her identity and her career qualifications had been stolen.
"They told me that their teaching records showed Ginetta Rossi had moved to Victoria the previous year," Rossi recalls.
"I told them I was Ginetta Rossi but they wouldn't believe me."
To make matters worse, when Rossi investigated further, she found that the woman who stole her identity was Renai Brochard, the partner of her former husband.
"I felt sick," says Rossi, who has agreed to speak publicly about her case for the first time.
"It would have been bad enough for someone off the street to steal my identity but this was my ex-husband's partner.
"I thought, 'who is going to believe me?"'
Rossi was a victim of what police say is the vogue crime of the new millennium: identity fraud. A staggering 124,000 Australians each year wake up one day to find that their identity has been stolen.
A further 383,300 also become victims of partial identity theft through credit card fraud.
Identity fraud, which costs Australians up to $4billion a year, is growing rapidly as criminals plunder our personal details from the internet, from rubbish bins, and from online chat rooms in order to adopt our identity. The problem has forced the government to launch new policies to fight the trend.
Attorney-General Robert McClelland told The Weekend Australian: "Identity security is central to Australia's national security, law enforcement and economic interests and vital in protecting Australian citizens from the theft or misuse of their identities."
Victims can lose their life savings or find debt-collectors on their doorstep for debts they did not accrue. Because it involves an invasion of privacy, it can also leave psychological scars.
In the case of Rossi, her loss of identity created ripple effects across two states. While police were investigating the identity theft, she was instructed not to tell anyone.
"I was freaking out thinking 'what if she has done something wrong using my name?'," she says.
Rossi's fears were well founded. By the time she discovered her identity had been stolen, Brochard - now registered in Victoria as teacher Ginetta Rossi - was causing havoc in an exclusive Melbourne private primary school.
Parents at that school, the Melbourne Montessori School, were complaining that the teacher of their six-year-old children did not appear to know the first thing about teaching.
But the school did not believe them for many months and continued to back the fake teacher. It was only when the real Rossi went to police that the whistle was blown on Brochard, who had been teaching at the $7000-a-year school for a full year. The saga ended last year when Brochard was convicted of deception and given a three-month suspended jail term.
But it continues to have an impact on the school, which became the subject of a full-scale review by the authorities and is awaiting a decision from Victorian authorities on whether it retains its registration.
Brochard, meanwhile, returned to South Australia and was employed by an Adelaide childcare centre that was not aware she was a convicted fraudster. She was sacked last October after her identity became known, prompting the South Australian government to order a review into how she was cleared by authorities to work at the Woodcroft childcare centre.
South Australian Early Childhood Development Minister Jay Weatherill this week declined to answer questions from The Weekend Australian about the outcome of that review. Brochard could not be contacted for comment.
Rossi says one of the most distressing aspects of losing her identity was convincing sceptical authorities that she was the real Ginetta Rossi.
"It was initially hard to get people to believe that I was who I said I was," she says. "I remember the look on the poor policewoman's face when I told her, 'I'm here to report identity fraud, I believe my ex-partner's partner has stolen my identity.' She must have thought I was a fruit-loop."
Brochard stole Rossi's identity by telling the Teachers Registration Board of South Australia she was Rossi and that she had lost her registration certificate and needed a duplicate copy.
Brochard then provided a false statutory declaration of her identity to convince authorities to give her a copy of the certificate, which they did.
She then moved to Victoria but when she applied to the Victorian Institute of Teaching to be registered in the state her fake application was shoddy. Brochard misspelled Ginetta on some registration documents and had whited out her name and replaced it with Rossi on her birth certificate.
Despite this, the VIT did not pick up the faults and agreed to register Brochard as a teacher.
Rossi was luckier than most victims of identity fraud in that Brochard did not steal her tax file number or gain access to her bank accounts. A report on identity crime by the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General last year said many victims lost not only their savings but also their personal credit ratings.
"Individual victims of identity crime spend an average of two or more years attempting to fix their credit report and restore their credit rating," the report says.
An increasingly common form of stealing people's personal details is through so-called "phishing emails", in which fake emails purporting to be from trusted institutions like banks ask people to provide personal details.
This week the Australian Federal Police warned of the circulation of a scam email that falsely claimed to be from the AFP and requested personal and financial information.
Arguably the fastest-growing area of identity fraud is via websites such as Facebook and chat rooms. Research conducted by the National Cyber Security Alliance reveals 74 per cent of social networking users divulge personal information such as email addresses, names and birthdays.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Saying goodbye to the Duplicate Certificate Title
The biggest problem, and this appears to have been overlooked due to all the other distractions and debates, is the duplicate title. If you are going to replace paper based systems with paperless electronic systems, you need to get rid of the duplicate title. The first step in paving the way for electronic conveyancing is eliminate the paper duplicate certificate of title. To do this, you need policy, legislation and implementation.
I just cannot see how electronic conveyancing can be introduced and work successfully unless the duplicate has been eliminated. If it just too hard to abolish the duplicate title, I really think we are better off thinking about other things, like cars, long weekends and other fun things.
At the moment there is no clear policy on dealing with the duplicate. And certainly nothing that goes close to a uniform national approach from all eight jurisdictions. Queensland has come closest to abolition of the duplicate, but even there it is optional for a party to request a certificate. Only a current title search will reveal if a certificate of title has been issued.
In Victoria, the duplicate certificate of title has not been abolished, but the issue was addressed in the context of electronic conveyancing which as we know is living in a state of limbo. But if we were to wake up one morning and find ourselves using the ECV system, one has to look at the requirements and standards that conveyancers must observe. The key provisions deal with identity and clients need to be properly identified to prove they and only they have the right to deal with the land on the Register. The Transfer of Land Act was amended with the insertion of section 27AB Verification of Identity.
The Registrar is not required to register an instrument under section 27A if the Registrar is not satisfied as to the identity of any person by or on behalf of whom the instrument was executed.
Item 3.3 of the gazetted Registrar's requirements for subscribers to identify a client, being an individual are at least 100 points in accordance with Schedule 6.
Schedule 6 is in three parts. The first part is the straight forward 100 points proof of identity credentials. Checking the passport, birth certificate, drivers licence, medicare card, rate certificate etc.
As the Registrar correctly recognised, the 100 points standard is deficient unless the credentials are verified. This makes perfect sense to avoid identity fraud - either title fraud or mortgage fraud. Anyone can photoshop a drivers licence. Well not anyone but anyone with a crooked bent can. It now looks like the life of a conveyancer is not conveyancing but becoming a pseudo detective to catch the crook. The second and third parts of the identity check is to -
Part 2. keep a copy of the identity documents (although this could lead to breaches of personal privacy data if these documents were lost) and list the type of document, names, as in the extract published below
Part 3. detail the methods and sources of verification for Checks. In an exercise of futility I dutifully rang Vic Roads to ask how I would go about verifying a client's driver licence which equates to 40 out of 100 points. Kerry-anne of VicRoads was very helpful and liaised with her departmental manager and advised the following is required for any licence verfication check -
VicRoads has three requirements.
1. Consent from person in writing (privacy) for VicRoads to divulge information to lawyer / conveyancer
2. License Search Request: providing Name; Licence No; DOB; Address.
3. Search application fee of $7.80
Delivery methods
In person - done over the counter
By Mail - 5 working days (only 5 days!)
God help us if there were more than one individual registered on title.
So you see the conundrum. If we want to replace paper based conveyancing with electronic methods, we first have to abolish the duplicate title. If we abolish the duplicate, we have to replace it with a methodology of identification requirements. When you take a hard look at the issues of identity, you can come up with a system that has all the appropriate safeguards, but and the but is you can end up engineering a system that is worse than the current system we already have, know and works.
I just cannot see how electronic conveyancing can be introduced and work successfully unless the duplicate has been eliminated. If it just too hard to abolish the duplicate title, I really think we are better off thinking about other things, like cars, long weekends and other fun things.
At the moment there is no clear policy on dealing with the duplicate. And certainly nothing that goes close to a uniform national approach from all eight jurisdictions. Queensland has come closest to abolition of the duplicate, but even there it is optional for a party to request a certificate. Only a current title search will reveal if a certificate of title has been issued.
In Victoria, the duplicate certificate of title has not been abolished, but the issue was addressed in the context of electronic conveyancing which as we know is living in a state of limbo. But if we were to wake up one morning and find ourselves using the ECV system, one has to look at the requirements and standards that conveyancers must observe. The key provisions deal with identity and clients need to be properly identified to prove they and only they have the right to deal with the land on the Register. The Transfer of Land Act was amended with the insertion of section 27AB Verification of Identity.
The Registrar is not required to register an instrument under section 27A if the Registrar is not satisfied as to the identity of any person by or on behalf of whom the instrument was executed.
Item 3.3 of the gazetted Registrar's requirements for subscribers to identify a client, being an individual are at least 100 points in accordance with Schedule 6.
Schedule 6 is in three parts. The first part is the straight forward 100 points proof of identity credentials. Checking the passport, birth certificate, drivers licence, medicare card, rate certificate etc.
As the Registrar correctly recognised, the 100 points standard is deficient unless the credentials are verified. This makes perfect sense to avoid identity fraud - either title fraud or mortgage fraud. Anyone can photoshop a drivers licence. Well not anyone but anyone with a crooked bent can. It now looks like the life of a conveyancer is not conveyancing but becoming a pseudo detective to catch the crook. The second and third parts of the identity check is to -
Part 2. keep a copy of the identity documents (although this could lead to breaches of personal privacy data if these documents were lost) and list the type of document, names, as in the extract published below
Part 3. detail the methods and sources of verification for Checks. In an exercise of futility I dutifully rang Vic Roads to ask how I would go about verifying a client's driver licence which equates to 40 out of 100 points. Kerry-anne of VicRoads was very helpful and liaised with her departmental manager and advised the following is required for any licence verfication check -
VicRoads has three requirements.
1. Consent from person in writing (privacy) for VicRoads to divulge information to lawyer / conveyancer
2. License Search Request: providing Name; Licence No; DOB; Address.
3. Search application fee of $7.80
Delivery methods
In person - done over the counter
By Mail - 5 working days (only 5 days!)
God help us if there were more than one individual registered on title.
So you see the conundrum. If we want to replace paper based conveyancing with electronic methods, we first have to abolish the duplicate title. If we abolish the duplicate, we have to replace it with a methodology of identification requirements. When you take a hard look at the issues of identity, you can come up with a system that has all the appropriate safeguards, but and the but is you can end up engineering a system that is worse than the current system we already have, know and works.
Caveats Online
Electronic Conveyancing: "Saving you time, money and effort". Well that's the official spin from ECV. For the moment that is hollow rhetoric. It might save your client the odd $20 on statutory fees. But it is questionable when it comes to saving time and effort. This is demonstrated by the process for lodging one of the simplest of instruments – a caveat
How much time did it take above the manual system when lodging caveats online? I estimate it took over 20 minutes of additional time (which would be better spent on hold trying to book a settlement with the banks). In the old fashioned manner of paper and print, a simple purchaser's caveat takes just a few minutes to print, sign and post. The electronic alternative takes over 20 minutes. The couple of caveats we lodged online each took well in excess of 20 minutes to complete. One took 26 minutes, the other about 25 minutes. With repetition, you might just get it under 20 minutes, but I don't think I will be persevering too much longer because of the time factor. Unless it saves you time, using the system will translate into higher costs to the client. Still, if the matter was one of urgency, I would lodge electronically, but not otherwise. The irony is to lodge a caveat online, first I printed out the caveat to assist me in completing the fields online. In addition, the process is simply bewildering.
How much time did it take above the manual system when lodging caveats online? I estimate it took over 20 minutes of additional time (which would be better spent on hold trying to book a settlement with the banks). In the old fashioned manner of paper and print, a simple purchaser's caveat takes just a few minutes to print, sign and post. The electronic alternative takes over 20 minutes. The couple of caveats we lodged online each took well in excess of 20 minutes to complete. One took 26 minutes, the other about 25 minutes. With repetition, you might just get it under 20 minutes, but I don't think I will be persevering too much longer because of the time factor. Unless it saves you time, using the system will translate into higher costs to the client. Still, if the matter was one of urgency, I would lodge electronically, but not otherwise. The irony is to lodge a caveat online, first I printed out the caveat to assist me in completing the fields online. In addition, the process is simply bewildering.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Authenticating Paperwork
Schneier on Security
A blog covering security and security technology.
June 25, 2009
Authenticating Paperwork
It's a sad, horrific story. Homeowner returns to find his house demolished. The demolition company was hired legitimately but there was a mistake and it demolished the wrong house. The demolition company relied on GPS co-ordinates, but requiring street addresses isn't a solution. A typo in the address is just as likely, and it would have demolished the house just as quickly.
The problem is less how the demolishers knew which house to knock down, and more how they confirmed that knowledge. They trusted the paperwork, and the paperwork was wrong. Informality works when everybody knows everybody else. When merchants and customers know each other, government officials and citizens know each other, and people know their neighbours, people know what's going on. In that sort of milieu, if something goes wrong, people notice.
In our modern anonymous world, paperwork is how things get done. Traditionally, signatures, forms, and watermarks all made paperwork official. Forgeries were possible but difficult. Today, there's still paperwork, but for the most part it only exists until the information makes its way into a computer database. Meanwhile, modern technology -- computers, fax machines and desktop publishing software -- has made it easy to forge paperwork. Every case of identity theft has, at its core, a paperwork failure. Fake work orders, purchase orders, and other documents are used to steal computers, equipment, and stock. Occasionally, fake faxes result in people being sprung from prison. Fake boarding passes can get you through airport security. This month hackers officially changed the name of a Swedish man.
A reporter even changed the ownership of the Empire State Building. Sure, it was a stunt, but this is a growing form of crime. Someone pretends to be you -- preferably when you're away on holiday -- and sells your home to someone else, forging your name on the paperwork. You return to find someone else living in your house, someone who thinks he legitimately bought it. In some senses, this isn't new. Paperwork mistakes and fraud have happened ever since there was paperwork. And the problem hasn't been fixed yet for several reasons.
One, our sloppy systems generally work fine, and it's how we get things done with minimum hassle. Most people's houses don't get demolished and most people's names don't get maliciously changed. As common as identity theft is, it doesn't happen to most of us. These stories are news because they are so rare. And in many cases, it's cheaper to pay for the occasional blunder than ensure it never happens.
Two, sometimes the incentives aren't in place for paperwork to be properly authenticated. The people who demolished that family home were just trying to get a job done. The same is true for government officials processing title and name changes. Banks get paid when money is transferred from one account to another, not when they find a paperwork problem. We're all irritated by forms stamped 17 times, and other mysterious bureaucratic processes, but these are actually designed to detect problems.
And three, there's a psychological mismatch: it is easy to fake paperwork, yet for the most part we act as if it has magical properties of authenticity.
What's changed is scale. Fraud can be perpetrated against hundreds of thousands, automatically. Mistakes can affect that many people, too. What we need are laws that penalise people or companies -- criminally or civilly -- who make paperwork errors. This raises the cost of mistakes, making authenticating paperwork more attractive, which changes the incentives of those on the receiving end of the paperwork. And that will cause the market to devise technologies to verify the providence, accuracy, and integrity of information: telephone verification, addresses and GPS co-ordinates, cryptographic authentication, systems that double- and triple-check, and so on.
We can't reduce society's reliance on paperwork, and we can't eliminate errors based on it. But we can put economic incentives in place for people and companies to authenticate paperwork more.
This essay originally appeared in The Guardian.
A blog covering security and security technology.
June 25, 2009
Authenticating Paperwork
It's a sad, horrific story. Homeowner returns to find his house demolished. The demolition company was hired legitimately but there was a mistake and it demolished the wrong house. The demolition company relied on GPS co-ordinates, but requiring street addresses isn't a solution. A typo in the address is just as likely, and it would have demolished the house just as quickly.
The problem is less how the demolishers knew which house to knock down, and more how they confirmed that knowledge. They trusted the paperwork, and the paperwork was wrong. Informality works when everybody knows everybody else. When merchants and customers know each other, government officials and citizens know each other, and people know their neighbours, people know what's going on. In that sort of milieu, if something goes wrong, people notice.
In our modern anonymous world, paperwork is how things get done. Traditionally, signatures, forms, and watermarks all made paperwork official. Forgeries were possible but difficult. Today, there's still paperwork, but for the most part it only exists until the information makes its way into a computer database. Meanwhile, modern technology -- computers, fax machines and desktop publishing software -- has made it easy to forge paperwork. Every case of identity theft has, at its core, a paperwork failure. Fake work orders, purchase orders, and other documents are used to steal computers, equipment, and stock. Occasionally, fake faxes result in people being sprung from prison. Fake boarding passes can get you through airport security. This month hackers officially changed the name of a Swedish man.
A reporter even changed the ownership of the Empire State Building. Sure, it was a stunt, but this is a growing form of crime. Someone pretends to be you -- preferably when you're away on holiday -- and sells your home to someone else, forging your name on the paperwork. You return to find someone else living in your house, someone who thinks he legitimately bought it. In some senses, this isn't new. Paperwork mistakes and fraud have happened ever since there was paperwork. And the problem hasn't been fixed yet for several reasons.
One, our sloppy systems generally work fine, and it's how we get things done with minimum hassle. Most people's houses don't get demolished and most people's names don't get maliciously changed. As common as identity theft is, it doesn't happen to most of us. These stories are news because they are so rare. And in many cases, it's cheaper to pay for the occasional blunder than ensure it never happens.
Two, sometimes the incentives aren't in place for paperwork to be properly authenticated. The people who demolished that family home were just trying to get a job done. The same is true for government officials processing title and name changes. Banks get paid when money is transferred from one account to another, not when they find a paperwork problem. We're all irritated by forms stamped 17 times, and other mysterious bureaucratic processes, but these are actually designed to detect problems.
And three, there's a psychological mismatch: it is easy to fake paperwork, yet for the most part we act as if it has magical properties of authenticity.
What's changed is scale. Fraud can be perpetrated against hundreds of thousands, automatically. Mistakes can affect that many people, too. What we need are laws that penalise people or companies -- criminally or civilly -- who make paperwork errors. This raises the cost of mistakes, making authenticating paperwork more attractive, which changes the incentives of those on the receiving end of the paperwork. And that will cause the market to devise technologies to verify the providence, accuracy, and integrity of information: telephone verification, addresses and GPS co-ordinates, cryptographic authentication, systems that double- and triple-check, and so on.
We can't reduce society's reliance on paperwork, and we can't eliminate errors based on it. But we can put economic incentives in place for people and companies to authenticate paperwork more.
This essay originally appeared in The Guardian.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Court win for apartment buyers leaves developers reeling
VICTORIANS buying houses and units off the plan have secured new legal rights to demand their money back, under a landmark ruling that has sparked fears of a collapse of projects across Melbourne.
In a setback for an industry already reeling from the credit crunch, the Supreme Court of Victoria has found that off-the-plan buyers can tear up their contracts and get their deposits back when projects are not completed on time.
The ruling came in a case involving two luxury apartment buyers in Geelong who won the right to have their deposits refunded and contracts revoked because the developer took several months longer to finish the project than agreed.
Until this ruling, it had been standard practice for developers to put clauses into off-the-plan contracts allowing for the extension of completion dates.
Reasons for late completion could have included labour strikes, planning approval delays, shortages of materials or labour and weather.
But in a ruling this month, Justice Bernard Bongiorno said such clauses were invalid because they put the risk of delay onto home buyers, leaving them with no way out.
The decision is an unwelcome one for an industry already faltering in the credit crunch, with more than $2 billion worth of Melbourne projects delayed or abandoned since September because of a lack of finance.
A leading property lawyer estimated the decision had put 10 per cent of Melbourne projects at greater risk of collapse.
One of those involved in the case, Jennifer Clifford, said developer Solid Investments had asked for three time extensions to complete her $2 million apartment overlooking Corio Bay. "None of it was the developer's fault," she said. "Things just kept going wrong. I mean there were objections and they struck an underground creek.
"(But) why should we as the prospective purchasers just have to keep hanging on for who knows how long?"
The Edgewater project, in which businessman Frank Costa paid a record Geelong price of more than $3 million for a penthouse, was completed in March.
Edgewater developer Murray Stone, who is appealing against the Supreme Court decision, said the ruling "opened a can of worms" for the industry. "Any contract that now goes over the sunset clause becomes void," Mr Stone said. "Even if buyers want to settle the contract they can't. They have to enter a new contract and not get the stamp duty savings."
He said it was difficult for developers to simply make sunset clauses longer, say five years, because banks would not normally lend beyond a 30-month completion date.
"All projects will now be under an enormous amount of pressure and the banks will probably not loan."
Freehills property partner David Sinn, whose firm was not involved in the case but advises many developers, said it set a precedent that had the industry worried about project collapse.
"Any current development where they have pre-sold apartments and are struggling to get finance is now at risk of buyers terminating their contracts and getting refunds," he said.
The Age Marika Dobbin
June 25, 2009
In a setback for an industry already reeling from the credit crunch, the Supreme Court of Victoria has found that off-the-plan buyers can tear up their contracts and get their deposits back when projects are not completed on time.
The ruling came in a case involving two luxury apartment buyers in Geelong who won the right to have their deposits refunded and contracts revoked because the developer took several months longer to finish the project than agreed.
Until this ruling, it had been standard practice for developers to put clauses into off-the-plan contracts allowing for the extension of completion dates.
Reasons for late completion could have included labour strikes, planning approval delays, shortages of materials or labour and weather.
But in a ruling this month, Justice Bernard Bongiorno said such clauses were invalid because they put the risk of delay onto home buyers, leaving them with no way out.
The decision is an unwelcome one for an industry already faltering in the credit crunch, with more than $2 billion worth of Melbourne projects delayed or abandoned since September because of a lack of finance.
A leading property lawyer estimated the decision had put 10 per cent of Melbourne projects at greater risk of collapse.
One of those involved in the case, Jennifer Clifford, said developer Solid Investments had asked for three time extensions to complete her $2 million apartment overlooking Corio Bay. "None of it was the developer's fault," she said. "Things just kept going wrong. I mean there were objections and they struck an underground creek.
"(But) why should we as the prospective purchasers just have to keep hanging on for who knows how long?"
The Edgewater project, in which businessman Frank Costa paid a record Geelong price of more than $3 million for a penthouse, was completed in March.
Edgewater developer Murray Stone, who is appealing against the Supreme Court decision, said the ruling "opened a can of worms" for the industry. "Any contract that now goes over the sunset clause becomes void," Mr Stone said. "Even if buyers want to settle the contract they can't. They have to enter a new contract and not get the stamp duty savings."
He said it was difficult for developers to simply make sunset clauses longer, say five years, because banks would not normally lend beyond a 30-month completion date.
"All projects will now be under an enormous amount of pressure and the banks will probably not loan."
Freehills property partner David Sinn, whose firm was not involved in the case but advises many developers, said it set a precedent that had the industry worried about project collapse.
"Any current development where they have pre-sold apartments and are struggling to get finance is now at risk of buyers terminating their contracts and getting refunds," he said.
The Age Marika Dobbin
June 25, 2009
Clifford & Anor v Solid Investments Australia Pty Ltd |
| Date: 2 Jun 2009 |
| Citation: [2009] VSC 223 |
| Jurisdiction: Victorian Supreme Court |
| This case concerns a dispute as to whether the purchasers of two lots on a plan of subdivision have lawfully rescinded the contracts. The contracts were conditional upon registration of the plan of subdivision of the development, and conferred the right on the purchasers to avoid the contract if the plan was not registered by a certain date. The contract also provided for the date for registration to be extended by the vendor under the terms of the contract. The vendor gave notice of the extension of the date. The purchasers gave notice of rescission of the contracts, asserting that the contract term was ineffective to permit the extension under Sale of Land Act 1962 s9AE. The vendor refused to accept the notice of rescission. The Court considered (para 23) Everest Project Developments Pty Ltd v Mendoza and Ors which "held that the purpose and social policy underlying ss 9AA to 9AH of the Act was the protection of that section of the public which comprised purchasers of lots on unregistered plans of subdivision." In this instance, the Court said that the same reasoning applies to s9AE(2), which specifies that if the parties wish to stipulate a period other than the statutory period provided by that section, that other period must be specified in the contract itself. The Court ordered declarations that the contracts were lawfully rescinded by the purchasers. Link to Judgement |
Friday, June 19, 2009
E-conveyancing plan thrown a $2m lifeline
The Australian
Chris Merritt, Legal Affairs editor | June 19, 2009
THE push to establish a national electronic conveyancing system gained fresh impetus this week when the NSW government allocated $2 million to the project.
The extra funding, which was made available in the state budget, comes soon after NSW, Victoria and Queensland were given the leading roles in planning the national system on behalf of the Council of Australian Governments.
It also comes soon after Kevin Rudd was warned that the project was at risk of collapse because no funds had been allocated to establish the company that would run the system.
NSW Lands Minister Tony Kelly said his government had long been a supporter of a national e-conveyancing system and the extra $2m would help pay for its contractual and logistical expenses.
The extra funding has been allocated to the Lands Department, but if the company that will run the national e-conveyancing system is established before July next year, the $2m from NSW will be redirected to support the new entity, Mr Kelly said.
"A single national electronic conveyancing system would be a significant step towards creating a seamless national economy and NSW is working with Victoria and Queensland for it to be operational from 2010," Mr Kelly said.
He said an independent study by KPMG had indicated that the potential annual cost savings in NSW from a single national e-conveyancing system (NECS) would amount to $50m.
"Costs for the average conveyancing transaction are expected to fall by $170, providing both home buyers and sellers overdue cost relief," Mr Kelly said. "The process efficiencies available to industry as a result of NECS include less data entry and document preparation, settlement and lodgment savings, courier and bank cheque savings, and lower process administration costs generally."
The extra funding for the national system comes soon after the Victorian government was asked to hold an independent audit into why its state-based e-conveyancing system had cost an estimated $50m to build yet had been used for just one completed property settlement.
State opposition frontbencher David Davis called for the audit after telling parliament that the state government was continuing to spend about $6m a year on its e-conveyancing system, which is known as Electronic Conveyancing Victoria.
Consultants had made "tens of millions of dollars" from the project, but there had been no return for the Victorian community, Mr Davis said. "It seems a very expensive approach given the very small number of transactions that have been achieved with that system."
In the 18 months since the system had been available for use, it had been used for one transaction and had not been endorsed by key industry groups such as the Law Institute of Victoria and the Australian Bankers Association, he said.
Mr Davis said the national approach to e-conveyancing, which had been endorsed by COAG, seemed like a significant step forward because it would provide a low-cost approach.
He said there was "enormous resistance" from other states and the federal government to the idea of using the Victorian system as the proposed national system.
"ECV would have to be massively adapted and would not necessarily work in a simple way," he said. "But the key thing here is that ECV has seen massive expenditure by the state government and has been a massive opportunity for consultants, who have made tens of millions of dollars."
The Victorian government declined to answer questions from The Australian about whether ECV had in fact cost $50m, as alleged by the state opposition.
The government also declined to say whether it would allow the expenditure on ECV to be audited.
Innovation Minister Gavin Jennings, who is responsible for ECV, said in a statement that the government was continuing to work with state and federal governments and believed ECV "provides the basis for a national approach to electronic conveyancing".
His statement said ECV had "successfully processed over 600 transactions".
When asked through his spokesman if all but one of those transactions concerned the lodgment of documents rather than property settlements, Mr Davis declined to answer. He also declined to provide a breakdown showing the type of transactions that had been processed by ECV.
"Victoria is an active participant in the COAG process and is continuing to work with all jurisdictions and industry groups in the development of a national EC system," the statement said.
While Victoria is one of the three states with a key role on the national project, the state government has a significant financial commitment to its own state-based system, a government document shows.
The same document shows the financial plan underpinning the government's expenditure on ECV could be at risk unless most property transactions go through the state-based system.
A regulatory impact statement, dated July 2007, for new fees on land transfer says: "... the government has provided over $29.4m toward the development of the electronic conveyancing project".
Although that figure only covers expenditure up to July 2007, the regulatory impact statement shows the government was expecting to spend a further $49.5m on the project between 2007-08 and 2013-14.
The figures contained in the regulatory impact statement indicate ECV could cost the Victorian government $80m by 2013-14. The document shows also it had been planning to spend a significant amount of that money employing contractors and consultants.
It says the state government "has indicated that the full implementation and ongoing operational costs should be recovered from users of the services of Land Victoria".
But it warns that the amount of revenue generated by ECV will depend on how many transactions are processed using the system and it says the expected take-up rate for ECV is 26.5 per cent of all property dealings in 2009-10, rising 69.8 per cent in 2013-14.
The year in which expenditure on ECV would be greatest was expected to be 2008-09 when the system was expected to have cost Victorian taxpayers $9.7m, the regulatory impact statement says.
The year with the smallest government expenditure on ECV was expected to be 2012-13 when the system was tipped to cost $5.7m.
Over the seven years covered by the regulatory impact statement, the biggest single item of expenditure was expected to be "application development and support", which was predicted to cost the state government $18.5m over that period.
This includes the costs of developing and supporting the software that underpins the system and of a contract with what the document refers to as an "application development and support service provider".
Salaries for public servants and contractors working on the project were expected to be $18.1m over the same period. According to the document, 10 contractors were working on ECV in various roles.
"Major items comprise project management, business operations, user acceptance testers and the roll-out team that will train potential users and provide support," the regulatory impact statement says.
Chris Merritt, Legal Affairs editor | June 19, 2009
THE push to establish a national electronic conveyancing system gained fresh impetus this week when the NSW government allocated $2 million to the project.
The extra funding, which was made available in the state budget, comes soon after NSW, Victoria and Queensland were given the leading roles in planning the national system on behalf of the Council of Australian Governments.
It also comes soon after Kevin Rudd was warned that the project was at risk of collapse because no funds had been allocated to establish the company that would run the system.
NSW Lands Minister Tony Kelly said his government had long been a supporter of a national e-conveyancing system and the extra $2m would help pay for its contractual and logistical expenses.
The extra funding has been allocated to the Lands Department, but if the company that will run the national e-conveyancing system is established before July next year, the $2m from NSW will be redirected to support the new entity, Mr Kelly said.
"A single national electronic conveyancing system would be a significant step towards creating a seamless national economy and NSW is working with Victoria and Queensland for it to be operational from 2010," Mr Kelly said.
He said an independent study by KPMG had indicated that the potential annual cost savings in NSW from a single national e-conveyancing system (NECS) would amount to $50m.
"Costs for the average conveyancing transaction are expected to fall by $170, providing both home buyers and sellers overdue cost relief," Mr Kelly said. "The process efficiencies available to industry as a result of NECS include less data entry and document preparation, settlement and lodgment savings, courier and bank cheque savings, and lower process administration costs generally."
The extra funding for the national system comes soon after the Victorian government was asked to hold an independent audit into why its state-based e-conveyancing system had cost an estimated $50m to build yet had been used for just one completed property settlement.
State opposition frontbencher David Davis called for the audit after telling parliament that the state government was continuing to spend about $6m a year on its e-conveyancing system, which is known as Electronic Conveyancing Victoria.
Consultants had made "tens of millions of dollars" from the project, but there had been no return for the Victorian community, Mr Davis said. "It seems a very expensive approach given the very small number of transactions that have been achieved with that system."
In the 18 months since the system had been available for use, it had been used for one transaction and had not been endorsed by key industry groups such as the Law Institute of Victoria and the Australian Bankers Association, he said.
Mr Davis said the national approach to e-conveyancing, which had been endorsed by COAG, seemed like a significant step forward because it would provide a low-cost approach.
He said there was "enormous resistance" from other states and the federal government to the idea of using the Victorian system as the proposed national system.
"ECV would have to be massively adapted and would not necessarily work in a simple way," he said. "But the key thing here is that ECV has seen massive expenditure by the state government and has been a massive opportunity for consultants, who have made tens of millions of dollars."
The Victorian government declined to answer questions from The Australian about whether ECV had in fact cost $50m, as alleged by the state opposition.
The government also declined to say whether it would allow the expenditure on ECV to be audited.
Innovation Minister Gavin Jennings, who is responsible for ECV, said in a statement that the government was continuing to work with state and federal governments and believed ECV "provides the basis for a national approach to electronic conveyancing".
His statement said ECV had "successfully processed over 600 transactions".
When asked through his spokesman if all but one of those transactions concerned the lodgment of documents rather than property settlements, Mr Davis declined to answer. He also declined to provide a breakdown showing the type of transactions that had been processed by ECV.
"Victoria is an active participant in the COAG process and is continuing to work with all jurisdictions and industry groups in the development of a national EC system," the statement said.
While Victoria is one of the three states with a key role on the national project, the state government has a significant financial commitment to its own state-based system, a government document shows.
The same document shows the financial plan underpinning the government's expenditure on ECV could be at risk unless most property transactions go through the state-based system.
A regulatory impact statement, dated July 2007, for new fees on land transfer says: "... the government has provided over $29.4m toward the development of the electronic conveyancing project".
Although that figure only covers expenditure up to July 2007, the regulatory impact statement shows the government was expecting to spend a further $49.5m on the project between 2007-08 and 2013-14.
The figures contained in the regulatory impact statement indicate ECV could cost the Victorian government $80m by 2013-14. The document shows also it had been planning to spend a significant amount of that money employing contractors and consultants.
It says the state government "has indicated that the full implementation and ongoing operational costs should be recovered from users of the services of Land Victoria".
But it warns that the amount of revenue generated by ECV will depend on how many transactions are processed using the system and it says the expected take-up rate for ECV is 26.5 per cent of all property dealings in 2009-10, rising 69.8 per cent in 2013-14.
The year in which expenditure on ECV would be greatest was expected to be 2008-09 when the system was expected to have cost Victorian taxpayers $9.7m, the regulatory impact statement says.
The year with the smallest government expenditure on ECV was expected to be 2012-13 when the system was tipped to cost $5.7m.
Over the seven years covered by the regulatory impact statement, the biggest single item of expenditure was expected to be "application development and support", which was predicted to cost the state government $18.5m over that period.
This includes the costs of developing and supporting the software that underpins the system and of a contract with what the document refers to as an "application development and support service provider".
Salaries for public servants and contractors working on the project were expected to be $18.1m over the same period. According to the document, 10 contractors were working on ECV in various roles.
"Major items comprise project management, business operations, user acceptance testers and the roll-out team that will train potential users and provide support," the regulatory impact statement says.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Rumour or Fact
AUSTRALIAN E-PROJECT ABANDONED
By Kelly Ng | 15 June 2009
FutureGov website
The Australian federal government has ignored a funding request and has withdrawn its involvement in a national online conveyancing system.
The National Electronic Conveyancing System (NECS) requires A$20 million (US$15.7 million) to establish itself and recruit executives. According to Les Taylor, Chair of the Steering Committee, industry participants – lawyers, bankers and conveyancers – will abandon the project if sufficient funding does not materialise.
The federal government allocated A$550 million (US$433 million) to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) to reform and harmonise regulation across states. Some of this money was meant to fund the e-conveyancing project. However, of the A$100 million that will be paid out this year, none has been earmarked for this project, said Taylor.
NECS, was started in 2005 was supposed to be completed by next March, will allow practitioners to electronically transfer property ownership and make payment online. It is expected to reduce costs of buying and selling property by A$250 million annually because consumers will pay less legal and conveyancing fees.
By Kelly Ng | 15 June 2009
FutureGov website
The Australian federal government has ignored a funding request and has withdrawn its involvement in a national online conveyancing system.
The National Electronic Conveyancing System (NECS) requires A$20 million (US$15.7 million) to establish itself and recruit executives. According to Les Taylor, Chair of the Steering Committee, industry participants – lawyers, bankers and conveyancers – will abandon the project if sufficient funding does not materialise.
The federal government allocated A$550 million (US$433 million) to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) to reform and harmonise regulation across states. Some of this money was meant to fund the e-conveyancing project. However, of the A$100 million that will be paid out this year, none has been earmarked for this project, said Taylor.
NECS, was started in 2005 was supposed to be completed by next March, will allow practitioners to electronically transfer property ownership and make payment online. It is expected to reduce costs of buying and selling property by A$250 million annually because consumers will pay less legal and conveyancing fees.
Friday, June 05, 2009
The federal Government cuts link to ailing e-scheme
Chris Merritt, Legal affairs editor | June 05, 2009
Article from: The Australian
THE federal Government severed one of its last links with the moves to establish a national electronic conveyancing system last week after being informed that the scheme was on the brink of collapse.
The decision to reduce the Government's involvement was taken last Friday by an inter-governmental committee that reports to Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and Small Business Minister Craig Emerson.
That group, the business regulation and competition working group, decided to hand responsibility for the planned system to the governments of Victoria, NSW and Queensland.
The decision came a week after Kevin Rudd was warned that the project was at risk of "complete failure".
This warning was contained in a letter to the Prime Minister from Les Taylor, a former general counsel at the Commonwealth Bank, who heads the steering committee that has been planning the national e-conveyancing system since 2005.
Mr Taylor told Mr Rudd that unless $20million in repayable seed funding could be found to establish the company that would run the new system, lawyers, bankers and conveyancers were likely to abandon the project.
While the commonwealth has promised the states $550million if they undertake a series of micro-economic reforms, including e-conveyancing, no funds have been earmarked for the project.
Friday's decision to shift responsibility for the scheme to Victoria, NSW and Queensland was taken by government officials at a meeting that was not attended by ministers.
One of those familiar with the meeting said it was normal for responsibility for major national projects to be divided between the states.
However, Opposition legal affairs spokesman George Brandis urged the Government to take back the lead role on the project and end years of bickering between the states that have alienated the private-sector players in conveyancing. "It has been a shambles for more than a year now and the Attorney-General has shown a complete lack of leadership in trying to resolve the problem," Senator Brandis said.
"There is a very significant risk that because of the delay and lack of leadership from the commonwealth in particular, that this whole project might fall over.
"The optimal result of a seamless national system is going to be lost and we may well end up with a set of arrangements that are no better than the current arrangements."
He said the problems with e-conveyancing went much deeper than the lack of funding to establish the new system.
"The various participants cannot even agree on a model that they are prepared to work towards," Senator Brandis said.
"Until the state governments are able to reach agreement on that threshold question, there is no point in talking about funding for the system."
He said the lack of agreement between the states appeared to be associated with the fact that the Victorian Government had continued to develop a state-based e-conveyancing system while industry and other state governments wanted a national one.
Last October, it was revealed in The Australian that the Victorian Government was continuing to develop its system -- less than four months after Mr Rudd had announced that all states would be using a national e-conveyancing system by March 2010.
In a joint statement with Mr Tanner, Mr Rudd said last July industry groups had estimated that "a national electronic conveyancing system could reduce the costs of buying and selling property by $250million a year".
"Consumers will save money by spending less on expensive legal and conveyancing fees," the joint statement said.
They said the agreement to establish a national system "is only possible because all states and territories have agreed to co-operate".
The delayed start date of late 2011 will deprive house buyers and sellers of cost savings that on the estimates used by Mr Rudd and Mr Tanner are worth about $437million.
The later start date was put in place after all state governments failed last year to meet a series of deadlines for seven key decisions on establishing the new system that had all been listed in the July statement by Mr Rudd and Mr Tanner.
At the same time, the Victorian Government continued to develop its state-based system, which would be at risk had the states reached agreement on the matters listed in the July statement.
The deadlines that the states missed had been set after e-conveyancing was placed on the agenda of the Council of Australian Governments following a summit in February last year of the key industry groups.
That meeting was chaired by one of the most senior officials in the federal Attorney-General's department, Richard Glenn.
Mr Tanner and Mr Emerson were then given responsibility for a working group of officials that was to prepare options for the structure of the system.
But in March, it emerged that the federal and state governments had agreed to delay the new system and responsibility for the project had moved back to the states.
Senator Brandis said the hiatus over the national e-conveyancing system could be resolved if Mr McClelland ensured the project was given priority by the standing committee of attorneys-general.
Article from: The Australian
THE federal Government severed one of its last links with the moves to establish a national electronic conveyancing system last week after being informed that the scheme was on the brink of collapse.
The decision to reduce the Government's involvement was taken last Friday by an inter-governmental committee that reports to Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and Small Business Minister Craig Emerson.
That group, the business regulation and competition working group, decided to hand responsibility for the planned system to the governments of Victoria, NSW and Queensland.
The decision came a week after Kevin Rudd was warned that the project was at risk of "complete failure".
This warning was contained in a letter to the Prime Minister from Les Taylor, a former general counsel at the Commonwealth Bank, who heads the steering committee that has been planning the national e-conveyancing system since 2005.
Mr Taylor told Mr Rudd that unless $20million in repayable seed funding could be found to establish the company that would run the new system, lawyers, bankers and conveyancers were likely to abandon the project.
While the commonwealth has promised the states $550million if they undertake a series of micro-economic reforms, including e-conveyancing, no funds have been earmarked for the project.
Friday's decision to shift responsibility for the scheme to Victoria, NSW and Queensland was taken by government officials at a meeting that was not attended by ministers.
One of those familiar with the meeting said it was normal for responsibility for major national projects to be divided between the states.
However, Opposition legal affairs spokesman George Brandis urged the Government to take back the lead role on the project and end years of bickering between the states that have alienated the private-sector players in conveyancing. "It has been a shambles for more than a year now and the Attorney-General has shown a complete lack of leadership in trying to resolve the problem," Senator Brandis said.
"There is a very significant risk that because of the delay and lack of leadership from the commonwealth in particular, that this whole project might fall over.
"The optimal result of a seamless national system is going to be lost and we may well end up with a set of arrangements that are no better than the current arrangements."
He said the problems with e-conveyancing went much deeper than the lack of funding to establish the new system.
"The various participants cannot even agree on a model that they are prepared to work towards," Senator Brandis said.
"Until the state governments are able to reach agreement on that threshold question, there is no point in talking about funding for the system."
He said the lack of agreement between the states appeared to be associated with the fact that the Victorian Government had continued to develop a state-based e-conveyancing system while industry and other state governments wanted a national one.
Last October, it was revealed in The Australian that the Victorian Government was continuing to develop its system -- less than four months after Mr Rudd had announced that all states would be using a national e-conveyancing system by March 2010.
In a joint statement with Mr Tanner, Mr Rudd said last July industry groups had estimated that "a national electronic conveyancing system could reduce the costs of buying and selling property by $250million a year".
"Consumers will save money by spending less on expensive legal and conveyancing fees," the joint statement said.
They said the agreement to establish a national system "is only possible because all states and territories have agreed to co-operate".
The delayed start date of late 2011 will deprive house buyers and sellers of cost savings that on the estimates used by Mr Rudd and Mr Tanner are worth about $437million.
The later start date was put in place after all state governments failed last year to meet a series of deadlines for seven key decisions on establishing the new system that had all been listed in the July statement by Mr Rudd and Mr Tanner.
At the same time, the Victorian Government continued to develop its state-based system, which would be at risk had the states reached agreement on the matters listed in the July statement.
The deadlines that the states missed had been set after e-conveyancing was placed on the agenda of the Council of Australian Governments following a summit in February last year of the key industry groups.
That meeting was chaired by one of the most senior officials in the federal Attorney-General's department, Richard Glenn.
Mr Tanner and Mr Emerson were then given responsibility for a working group of officials that was to prepare options for the structure of the system.
But in March, it emerged that the federal and state governments had agreed to delay the new system and responsibility for the project had moved back to the states.
Senator Brandis said the hiatus over the national e-conveyancing system could be resolved if Mr McClelland ensured the project was given priority by the standing committee of attorneys-general.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Land Victoria - Request for an audit
Land Victoria: electronic conveyancing
Mr D. DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) -- My adjournment matter is for the attention of the Minister for Environment and Climate Change, who is responsible for the Land Victoria section of the Department of Sustainability and Environment. It concerns in particular Electronic Conveyancing Victoria, known as ECV, an electronic conveyancing system that seeks to replace paper transactions with electronic conveyancing. The Victorian government has expended a significant amount of money -- $50 million on recent estimates and more than $40 million 18 months ago -- and is continuing to spend around $6 million a year on the ECV project. The national approach that was endorsed by the Council of Australian Governments about a year ago was a significant step forward, because it would have provided a low-cost approach to conveyancing transactions around the country. Unfortunately Electronic Conveyancing Victoria, despite expenditure of more than $50 million, has only had one transaction in the 18 months it has been in operation. It seems a very expensive approach, given the very small number of transactions that have been achieved with that system. I am very aware that the Australian Bankers Association, the Law Institute of Victoria and other key groups, like the conveyancers, have not endorsed ECV and the electronic conveyancing approach in Victoria. What I now seek from the Minister for Environment and Climate Change, after the expenditure of at least $50 million of public money for a single completed conveyancing transaction, is an audit. I seek that he order a clear external audit that would achieve an understanding of how this money has been wasted and how the government proposes to put this into the national scheme. There is still enormous resistance from the other states and the national government to the simple approach of putting ECV in as the national system. ECV would have to be massively adapted and would not necessarily work in a simple way, but the key thing here is that Electronic Conveyancing Victoria has seen massive expenditure by the state government and has been a massive opportunity for consultants, who have made tens of millions of dollars with no return to the Victorian community, so I ask the Victorian environment minister to immediately launch an audit.
Hansard. Upper House. 3 June 09
Mr D. DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) -- My adjournment matter is for the attention of the Minister for Environment and Climate Change, who is responsible for the Land Victoria section of the Department of Sustainability and Environment. It concerns in particular Electronic Conveyancing Victoria, known as ECV, an electronic conveyancing system that seeks to replace paper transactions with electronic conveyancing. The Victorian government has expended a significant amount of money -- $50 million on recent estimates and more than $40 million 18 months ago -- and is continuing to spend around $6 million a year on the ECV project. The national approach that was endorsed by the Council of Australian Governments about a year ago was a significant step forward, because it would have provided a low-cost approach to conveyancing transactions around the country. Unfortunately Electronic Conveyancing Victoria, despite expenditure of more than $50 million, has only had one transaction in the 18 months it has been in operation. It seems a very expensive approach, given the very small number of transactions that have been achieved with that system. I am very aware that the Australian Bankers Association, the Law Institute of Victoria and other key groups, like the conveyancers, have not endorsed ECV and the electronic conveyancing approach in Victoria. What I now seek from the Minister for Environment and Climate Change, after the expenditure of at least $50 million of public money for a single completed conveyancing transaction, is an audit. I seek that he order a clear external audit that would achieve an understanding of how this money has been wasted and how the government proposes to put this into the national scheme. There is still enormous resistance from the other states and the national government to the simple approach of putting ECV in as the national system. ECV would have to be massively adapted and would not necessarily work in a simple way, but the key thing here is that Electronic Conveyancing Victoria has seen massive expenditure by the state government and has been a massive opportunity for consultants, who have made tens of millions of dollars with no return to the Victorian community, so I ask the Victorian environment minister to immediately launch an audit.
Hansard. Upper House. 3 June 09
Westpac sorry for security 'stuff-up'
FULL DISCLOSURE / MARK HAWTHORNE / THE AGE
June 4, 2009
A SECURITY breach has allowed confidential Westpac shareholder information to be included in an official document published on the Australian Securities Exchange website.
A document Westpac released to the ASX in March contains the security holder reference numbers (SRN) and holder identification numbers (HIN) of up to 20 different accounts controlled by global investment bank JPMorgan and retired 65-year-old shareholder Peter Liddle, who resides in the Northern Territory. Such details could be used by share "bottom feeders" such as David Tweed to gain control of the shareholdings.
The addresses and account details of JPMorgan Nominees and Mr Liddle are hidden in white type in the PDF document, which was issued by Westpac company secretary Anna Sandham on March 13.
The details cannot be read — but if the words are highlighted and copied into another document, such as an email, they can be converted into black type.
Several business websites, such as wotnews.com.au, converted the PDF document into text, and in doing so published the SRNs and account details on the internet.
The letter was sent to holders of St George Bank shares and hybrid securities, offering the chance to convert them into new Westpac securities. The two banks merged last year.
A spokeswoman for JPMorgan said she was "astonished" to learn Westpac was responsible for the security breach, but assured the bank's institutional customers that their shares were safe. "These are nominee accounts and no transfer of the shares can be done without the approval of the actual account holder," said Claire Linton-Evans.
Such safeguards are not in place for retail shareholders such as Mr Liddle, who only discovered his account details were public knowledge when BusinessDay contacted him.
"I'm absolutely horrified to find that all of my personal account details can be read on the internet," Mr Liddle said. "I've already had that Tweed bloke trying to get his hands on my wife's Woolies shares once this year, and my SRN is on the internet. It's my 65th birthday today, and now I have to sort out this mess."
Westpac spokesman David Lording admitted that a "stuff-up" had led to the release of the information. "It was our mistake, it was our fault, and we have already apologised to the people affected," Mr Lording said. "We contacted them today and apologised, and will be implementing new procedures to ensure it doesn't happen again."
Mr Lording said he was aware the information had "originated" in an official release from the bank to the ASX. "Somehow the information was in that document. It was an inadvertent mistake, not a deliberate one, and we apologise to the shareholders affected."
June 4, 2009
A SECURITY breach has allowed confidential Westpac shareholder information to be included in an official document published on the Australian Securities Exchange website.
A document Westpac released to the ASX in March contains the security holder reference numbers (SRN) and holder identification numbers (HIN) of up to 20 different accounts controlled by global investment bank JPMorgan and retired 65-year-old shareholder Peter Liddle, who resides in the Northern Territory. Such details could be used by share "bottom feeders" such as David Tweed to gain control of the shareholdings.
The addresses and account details of JPMorgan Nominees and Mr Liddle are hidden in white type in the PDF document, which was issued by Westpac company secretary Anna Sandham on March 13.
The details cannot be read — but if the words are highlighted and copied into another document, such as an email, they can be converted into black type.
Several business websites, such as wotnews.com.au, converted the PDF document into text, and in doing so published the SRNs and account details on the internet.
The letter was sent to holders of St George Bank shares and hybrid securities, offering the chance to convert them into new Westpac securities. The two banks merged last year.
A spokeswoman for JPMorgan said she was "astonished" to learn Westpac was responsible for the security breach, but assured the bank's institutional customers that their shares were safe. "These are nominee accounts and no transfer of the shares can be done without the approval of the actual account holder," said Claire Linton-Evans.
Such safeguards are not in place for retail shareholders such as Mr Liddle, who only discovered his account details were public knowledge when BusinessDay contacted him.
"I'm absolutely horrified to find that all of my personal account details can be read on the internet," Mr Liddle said. "I've already had that Tweed bloke trying to get his hands on my wife's Woolies shares once this year, and my SRN is on the internet. It's my 65th birthday today, and now I have to sort out this mess."
Westpac spokesman David Lording admitted that a "stuff-up" had led to the release of the information. "It was our mistake, it was our fault, and we have already apologised to the people affected," Mr Lording said. "We contacted them today and apologised, and will be implementing new procedures to ensure it doesn't happen again."
Mr Lording said he was aware the information had "originated" in an official release from the bank to the ASX. "Somehow the information was in that document. It was an inadvertent mistake, not a deliberate one, and we apologise to the shareholders affected."
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