A National Property Register

The merger of six states registries into one.

In a recent newspaper report which hardly raised a headline, the Commonwealth and State Governments announced they were close to agreement on the creation of a National Property Register, a single national electronic conveyancing system and abolition of stamp duty on property transfers. The only two hold out states were Victoria and Queensland.

Victorian Minister Garrick Jennings is quoted as saying "Victoria wholeheartedly supports the principles of a National Property Register for the whole of Australia to replace the six state-based land registers. It makes sense and would better serve Australia's national interest".

The Federal Attorney General said the stumbling block was the quantum of the compensation for the loss of future revenues to the States. Victoria and Queensland is holding out despite the promise of $20 billion compensation payable over 5 years.

"The Australian financial industry has long recognised the merger of the six state registries to form the National Property Register is important for Australia's economic success." The past head of the Australian Bankers Association then went on to say, "this will put an end to decades of petty interstate rivalry and squabbling, and determinism not to have a single Property Act and regulation ... they are anxious to preserve their power in that area and are anxious to preserve the resources they have committed to it - their public servants, bureaucrats, etc ..." The finance industry advocate stated and re-stated the irrelevance of state boundaries to property and mortgage transactions in Australia today.

Addressing an audience at Monash University, the new Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan** said he did not believe that it could be seriously argued the property and mortgage regulation was not a Commonwealth responsibility:

When the present government took office, it essentially had three options ... it could have elected to do nothing and allow the current system to continue [with] total responsibility at a state and territorial level. Such an attitude would have meant that the Commonwealth in effect is saying that despite the national character of the property and mortgage markets its impact on the national economy and its significance to capital markets and taxation across the nation, the activities, structure and performance of such a market was of no direct concern or relevance to the Commonwealth government.


I cannot accept such a proposition. I do not believe it can any longer be seriously argued that if the community has the expectation of government regulation of the activities of the property and credit markets such regulation is more appropriately done at a state rather than Commonwealth level. The second option available ... is that of legislative confrontation. Essentially this was the course adopted by the Whitlam government ... the Commonwealth without seeking the approval and co-operation of the states legislate to cover the entire area of real property regulation and taxation of property & property transactions and await the outcome of inevitable High Court challenges to such actions in order that the constitutional position might hopefully be settled and the full extent of the Commonwealth constitutional power established .


Such a unilateral course ignores fundamental realities of the Australian federation. It discounts 108 years of state experience in property regulation. It ignores the very real apprehension felt by many sections of the business community in Australia that total concentration of power of property regulation in Australia in the hands of one government has inherent dangers.


Accordingly the government decided upon the third option ... in exchange for the States transferring the responsibility to administer property registrations and the related taxation powers the Commonwealth will pay the States an appropriate lump sum compensation"



Not every lawyer I spoke to agrees with a national approach. The senior partner of Dodson & Fogg seriously felt "we as a profession have spent the last 150 years getting used to the legislative framework of our respective state property laws, why change? It was bad enough in '83 when they introduced vendor disclosure."

Still for others, reform cannot come soon enough. The current paper system is on the verge of breaking down. In many cases it does. Horror stories abound about settlements cant be booked in, banks losing track of files, conveyancers being put on hold for an hour, banks losing titles and failing to register transfers.

However, for banks it is challenging enough to deal with 6 state based paper systems; the prospect of states introducing their own form of electronic financial settlements and e-lodgement would be too much to bear thinking about. Because that's where the current thinking is leading us, 8 paper based systems and 8 electronic systems, side by side. It's not going to happen. A single national conveyancing system is the only option.

Speaking to an advocate for all things digital, Barack Hayton backs the transition to a single property register, uniform property regulation and abolition of stamp duty. Such initiatives would clearly better serve Australia's interest. However, lets be realistic. To quote a Deputy Registrar of Titles, Land Victoria. "it will never happen."

At the present the problems are not government. Much of the problems are actually industry problems. The banks, law firms and the like are still paper factories, horribly inefficient and hostile to change.

The major banks are the root cause for many of the industry problems. A recent survey, supported by the Law Institute Victoria, identified the problems that are commonly inflicted upon their clients and clients' representatives -

* kept on hold for longer than 20 minutes
* having to fax the same thing more than twice
* mortgage / loan documents had to be redone
* not in a position to book settlement 48 hours prior
* lost / misplaced Titles
* settlement delayed through a bank stuff up


Link to Survey results and Breakdown of Complaints

It is imperative these issues are addressed and fixed. Its costing the industry millions annually in lost productivity. Worse than that, it is the impact on staff and recruitment. These are not isolated incidents. These are incidents that occur over and over again. The boards of the major banks and the heads of the mortgage sections are responsible for the problems and responsible for seeing the problems are addressed and fixed. Not just paying lip service or in-house band-aid solutions. We are talking industry led solutions. What options are there? hire more staff; rationalise procedures; or in this day and age the technical option. It is clear the first two options are not going to reform the industry.

Usually the best solutions are the simplest and often missed because they are too obvious. We are not talking about solving complex problems, on the contrary. The brief and the vision is fix the settlement problems. Settlements are about effective communications. Industry representatives from the major banks need to be summoned and locked up until agreement is reached to form an industry wide solution.

This is the year to do it - the 150th anniversary of the Torrens Title System. A National Property Register, however, still unfortunately remains just a pipe-dream.

The Argus | 01 April 2008

** I have borrowed from an actual speech given by John Howard, Treasurer in the Fraser Government, August 1976 on securities regulation. Apologies for all other (mis)quotes.