Chris Merritt, Legal affairs editor | October 24, 2008 : australian
MOVES to establish a national electronic conveyancing system have been rocked by accusations that the project may have been corrupted by a conflict of interest within the Victorian public service.
The accusations, made in the Senate estimates committee this week, triggered moves by the federal Government to shore up the integrity of the e-conveyancing project.
The secretary of the Attorney-General's Department, Roger Wilkins, told the committee that government agencies would ensure the process of developing the national e-conveyancing system had integrity.
The Attorney-General's Department and Department of Finance would need to assure themselves that they were not "falling into any traps" and that "things were above board", Mr Wilkins said.
He was responding to Opposition legal affairs spokesman George Brandis, who said there were serious and credible allegations that the process of selecting the national e-conveyancing system had been "corrupted by a conflict of interest within the state of Victoria".
Senator Brandis's allegations are based on reports in The Australian about the links between computer company Ajilon and the Victorian Government.
Ajilon, which built the state Government's $40 million e-conveyancing system, is a possible tenderer to build the national system. Senator Brandis told the committee that a meeting had taken place last month between Ajilon consultant Rick Dixon and federal government officials who are developing a plan for the national e-conveyancing system.
Mr Dixon is also electronic conveyancing manager within the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment.
On September 23, he provided a briefing to officials from federal Treasury and the federal Government's business regulation and competition working group.
The Council of Australian Governments has given the BRCWG responsibility for developing the plan for the national e-conveyancing system. Mr Dixon's meeting with this group took place at least three months before the establishment of a new "entity" that will be responsible for calling tenders to build the national system and deciding whether part of ECV's software can be used for the national system.
Documents obtained by The Australian show that Mr Dixon's talk concerned ECV and raised the question of how this system could best be "leveraged". The Victorian Government issued a statement yesterday that played down Ajilon's role in ECV.
Climate change minister Gavin Jennings, who is responsible for ECV, said the state Government believed the system "provides the basis for a national approach to electronic conveyancing".
Body: "Ajilon won a public tender to provide services and specialists to deliver an e-convey-ancing system for Victoria.
"The Ajilon company is engaged for consulting services and are not the developers of the system.
"They have no commercial or other intellectual property interests in the EC system," the statement said.
In parliament, Senator Brandis had asked whether the federal Government was concerned about what he described as "the obvious conflict of interest" in Victoria.
People with a commercial interest in ECV were also employees of the state government "which is seeking to implement and recommend to COAG the same system", he told the estimates committee.
He asked Mr Wilkins if the Government would investigate the affair but Mr Wilkins said "investigate might be too strong a word".
"We will have a good look at it," Mr Wilkins said.
The fate of the Victorian system has been in doubt since July when COAG took control of moves to build a national system and decided it would operate in all states, including Victoria.
COAG decided that ECV's software would be assessed by a new national entity that would be jointly owned by state and territory governments.
But instead of being dominated by government officials, this organisation will be run by a board that will be chosen for its technical skills.
Under the COAG plan, it is this group that will assess ECV and "to the extent that it is suitable" use it as the basis for the underlying software of the national system.
In parliament, Senator Brandis asked if the Attorney-General's Department would be concerned if the implementation of the plan for a national e-conveyancing system favoured the Victorian system when there were credible allegations of "a plain conflict of interest".
That conflict was between "the promoters of the system in their capacity as entrepreneurs and the responsible state government department which employs some of those self-same entrepreneurs".
Victorian Opposition frontbencher David Davis, who is responsible for the scrutiny of government, called for state Environment minister Gavin Jennings to dismiss Ajilon employees from his department.
"There is an inherent conflict of interest in being a paid-up consultant in the department of Sustainability and Environment and also a manager," Mr Davis said.
"Gavin Jennings should sack these consultants to clear up any doubts or confusion, or the perception of a conflict of interest."
Solicitors have boycotted ECV since it was launched late last year because the state Government has been unable to address their concerns that the system exposes them to extra potential liability.
Those concerns are based on advice from Victoria's Legal Practitioner's Liability Committee -- a statutory organisation that provides the first compulsory layer of professional indemnity insurance for the state's solicitors.
The major banks, which strongly oppose separate state-based e-conveyancing systems, have also refused to use ECV.
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