Creating an effective national system is Rudd's challenge

Chris Merritt | The Australian | 7 March 2008

The state governments have given Kevin Rudd a stark choice.

The PM now has little choice but to shunt them aside and take the leading role in the push to establish a national system of electronic conveyancing.

The parochial states have shown themselves incapable of committing themselves to an e-conveyancing system that is truly national.

They have ignored key players in conveyancing - banks and solicitors - and designed their own framework as if the interests of bureaucrats were paramount.

If Rudd does nothing, the state governments look set to kill the only chance this country will have of making big savings in the cost of property transactions.

An opportunity to cut the cost of buying a home is on the line. Rudd offered new leadership. Now is his chance.

After being duchessed in secret by the Victorian Government for three days, representatives of every state agreed this week to embark on a course of action that is likely to increase the cost of conveyancing, not reduce it.

They agreed to establish a network of state-based electronic conveyancing systems modelled on the system being boycotted by banks and solicitors in Victoria.

The banks want a single national system so they can avoid the cost of dealing with separate state systems. They have been crystal clear about that: they want nothing to do with a federation of state systems.

To proceed down that track is akin to repeating the conflicting rail gauges that were a legacy of small thinking in colonial times.

The only winner from this development might be the Government of Victoria - which hosted this week's meeting. It has spent $40 million building an e-conveyancing system few people use.

But if every other state adopts the same state-based system, Victoria's problem suddenly becomes a problem shared by every other state.

The problems in Victoria are substantial. Conveyancing costs have risen and there is no sign of solicitors and banks ending their boycott. And that is the system that will now spread like measles around the nation.

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To quote Shakespeare

Lear:
No, I will weep no more. In such a night
To shut me out? Pour on; I will endure.
In such a night as this? O Regan, Goneril!
Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all—
O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that.
King Lear Act 3, scene 4, 17–22