Name
Are you making a submission as an individual or do you represent an organisation?
What is the name of your organisation?
Do you agree that the recommendations of the Whittaker Review remain relevant to the current environment?
Please provide further information about why you provided that response
The PPSR act in the current form is only digestible to academia and lawyers and irrelevant in application and enforcement for small businesses, personal (natural person) properties. Law needs not just amendments but should be repealed.
1. The PPSR should be changed to " National asset register " incorporating a broad sense of the meaning covering the whole country, all class of assets, instead of the "personal property register" which implies a meaning of very narrow specific assets, if it still intends to cover all asset classes.
2.PPSR law in the current form and application doesn't cover personal property stolen? for example if the asset is stolen by someone which law can be applied to establish the ownership of the property? At the moment if the person accused of stealing the property argues in a court of law that the property is not perfected under the PPSR what happens to the ownership of the asset? Even the criminal proceedings can be derailed and will need substantial litigation to prove otherwise.
3.Goods - defined as proposed asset class - processed goods - Needs clarification, which is not just wheat mixed with wheat, but goods made with the wheat supplied - may be bread/ pasta or any other product. for example, if the paper supplied is used to make cartons and the cartons are used to pack goods, the security interest should cover the whole chain of activity, and if this is sold on, the security interest doesn't diminish until repealed (by process of payment or repealed by the securer (needs to be defined this appropriately)).
4. The law creates more litigious society and is cumbersome and making irrelevant obligations under contract laws by various governments, unless the assets are perfected. This puts an unexplainable volume of burden on small businesses and individuals doing business, most of them work under solid retention of title agreements and smaller amount of credit. The law should if re-enacted cover only financial companies and large single assets or specific class assets - such as motor vehicle, equipment, or asset worth $**,***.00 value in single transaction.
Do you agree with the government’s approach to reform in response to the Whittaker Review?
Please expand on your response
No, please read my response to previous question.
1. Perfection requirement should be for assets purchased as capital equipment, which has a certain life period and not consumable assets like goods for reprocessing.
2. Perfection requirement should be for assets above certain value in single transaction.
3. Small businesses should be exempt below 100K value, from needing to perfect the transaction under PPSR.
4. Legal implication of stolen goods cannot be established under perfection requirement and can be used as a loophole.
Do you agree that the reforms overall will simplify the operation of the PPS framework?
Please expand on your response
Only a complete replacement with a law which considers all aspects of practical commercial transaction will help, this is a law made for lawyers by lawyers, and has no relevance to community, this doesn't help to ease of doing business but complicate things.
In order to simplify the law the contractual obligations under common law should be eternal, not infringed by any other law (s) , any other law should be of basically supportive in nature. Under the PPSR law including the proposed basic contract law has been made redundant in most /certain circumstances.
Thinking about the approaches to transitional arrangements canvassed in part 5 of the consultation paper, what is your preferred approach?
Other, please specify
Under normal contract law applies if there is no PPSR , all financial lending under grand fathering .
From your perspective, what are the operational and practical considerations that the government should consider while implementing the proposed reforms?
1. Contractual obligations under common contract laws should be valid under all circumstances.
2.A national asset register can be provided instead of PPSR, where the contracts can be registered if the government still want the assets to be registered.
2. Government should consider compensating people /small businesses for losses due to the fallacy in PPSR laws in the last few years.
3. If PPSR is continued it has to be made very user friendly, not the current complicated registration process.
4. Government should be making aware the people through all possible avenues about the law, and the changed made, as many people probably including the legal fraternity is not aware of the changes previous to this on the law.
Thinking about the Amendment Bill and draft compilation, please provide any comments relating to the exposure draft of the Amendment Bill as a whole.
Repeal the whole law and re-introduce the law, this doesn't go far enough to get the issues sorted out due to the amendments and changes made few times.
Please provide any comments relating to the amendments in Schedule 1 of the Amendment Bill.
1.The law excludes the land, but doesn't talk about any assets on the land, and how to interpret the same, such as crops, old houses and any other assets similar in nature, trees.
2. a " Right " should be changed to " right of ownership. "
3. The law - amendment etc. is silent on part ownership in assets, and the right derived thereof. How this will be interpreted and how a part ownership can stall the process of asset liquidation.
Please provide any comments relating to the amendments in Schedule 2 of the Amendment Bill.
"Description" and redefining of assets creates entirely new set of issues and increases the likelihood of litigations as they are prone to be interpreted in various ways. Also specific items exclusion creates another can of worms, should not be allowed, or all should be considered as specific items exclusions.
Please provide any comments relating to the amendments in Schedule 3 of the Amendment Bill.
Defining " comingled " item is unthoughtful and doesn't have practical applications. The items produced by using the items under PPSR is entirely a new item and can have a new PPSR registration. The chain of custody, ROT (retention of title ownership) etc. are not clearly in the new amendments.
Please provide any comments relating to the amendments in Schedule 4 of the Amendment Bill.
The currency of contract law between the grantor and grantee should be continued even under insolvency, else the common contract law becomes meaning less .
Please provide any comments relating to the amendments in Schedule 5 of the Amendment Bill.
Complicated process for small business holders should be avoided, all assets below $10000 should be excluded, similarly transactions not used as collateral under financing not included under PPSR.
Please provide any comments relating to the amendments in Schedule 6 of the Amendment Bill.
No comments.
Please provide any comments relating to the amendments in Schedule 7 of the Amendment Bill.
No comments.
Please provide any comments you may have about the draft Regulations.
Please read my previous comments.
Thinking about the 16 recommendations canvassed by the consultation paper, do you have any comments you would like to provide in relation to these recommendations? In your response, please highlight the specific recommendation/s you are referring to.
No comments
Is there any additional information that you would like to provide?
Please consider compensating the businesses / people who lost money due to the errors in the law, the amendments were recommended in 2015, it has taken 8 years to implement, still not implemented.
