Key Documents
The Australian Government has released 2 sets of exposure draft regulations to help reduce the complexity of Australia’s corporations and financial services laws, by making Treasury portfolio regulations more adaptive, efficient, and navigable within existing policy settings.
The draft regulations support the regulatory stewardship of Treasury portfolio legislation. The government pursues regular improvement and maintenance opportunities under this program to ensure Treasury laws remain current and fit-for-purpose.
The government welcomes feedback from stakeholders on the draft regulations and explanatory material.
Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) regulations
The ALRC Regulations contain consequential amendments, primarily to the Corporations Regulations 2001 (Corporations Regulations), required following the proposed changes to the primary law contained in the Treasury Laws Amendment (Measures for consultation) Bill 2022: ALRC Financial Services Interim Report Tranche 2, which was released for consultation between 12 December 2022 and 15 January 2023.
The Treasury Laws Amendment Bill would implement 2 recommendations from the ALRC's Interim Report A to:
- create a single glossary of defined terms in section 9 of the Corporations Act 2001 (Corporations Act) and
- ‘unfreeze’ the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 (AIA) as it applies to the Corporations Act and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001 so the most current version of the AIA applies to both Acts.
The ALRC Regulations also partially implement 3 recommendations from the ALRC’s Interim Report B to:
- repeal redundant and spent regulations
- remove substantive obligations out of definitions
- amend unclear or incorrect regulations
The ALRC Regulations also make further miscellaneous amendments to improve navigability and comprehension.
The Modernising Business Communications (MBC) regulations
The MBC Regulations contain consequential amendments required following the changes to primary law contained in the Treasury Laws Amendment (Modernising Business Communications and Other Measures) Bill 2022.
The draft MBC Regulations make amendments to Treasury portfolio laws to:
- improve their technology neutrality, including ensuring that certain documents can be sent in either physical or electronic form
- remove prescriptive requirements to publish notices in newspapers in favour of a technology neutral standard of publication.
Responding
You can submit responses to this consultation up until 03 April 2023. Interested parties are invited to comment on this consultation.
While submissions may be lodged electronically or by post, electronic lodgement is preferred. For accessibility reasons, please submit responses sent via email in a Word or RTF format. An additional PDF version may also be submitted.
All information (including name and address details) contained in submissions will be made available to the public on the Treasury website unless you indicate that you would like all or part of your submission to remain in confidence. Automatically generated confidentiality statements in emails do not suffice for this purpose. Respondents who would like part of their submission to remain in confidence should provide this information marked as such in a separate attachment.
Legal requirements, such as those imposed by the Freedom of Information Act 1982, may affect the confidentiality of your submission.
View our submission guidelines for further information.
How To Respond
Post
Address written submissions to:
Treasury
Langton Cres
Parkes ACT 2600