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