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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-05-01 Daily Xml
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STATUTES AMENDMENT (REAL PROPERTY) BILL

Final Stages

Consideration in committee of the Legislative Council’s amendment.

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: I move:

That the Legislative Council’s amendment be agreed to.

The amendment will delete clause 68 of the bill. Clause 68 amends section 273 of the Real Property Act to require certification of an instrument of a prescribed class by each party to the instrument, or by a solicitor or registered conveyancer acting on behalf of each party. Although the government believes that the proposed amendment to section 273 of the existing act will help eliminate the risk of fraud, the conveyancing industry has expressed concerns about the amendment.

It is recognised and accepted by industry that these amendments will be required when a national electronic conveyancing system is introduced. The government is prepared at this stage to remove clause 68 from the bill to allow the issue raised by the industry to be worked through before the introduction of amendments to allow for the introduction of electronic conveyancing in South Australia, which is expected to be the year after next.

Mrs REDMOND: I am pleased to see that the government has agreed to the suggestion which I think I raised in this chamber and which was certainly raised by the Institute of Conveyancers in relation to this matter. I indicated at the time of the second reading debate on this bill that I had done conveyancing for more than 30 years, and in all that time I had certified a lot of instruments and never once contemplated having to certify the validity of the identity of the people whose documents I was signing.

It would be common, for instance, if I were acting for a purchaser to prepare the transfer and sign that certifying it correct—and that is exactly what this clause deals with; it is the certification by the conveyancer or solicitor that the instrument is correct—and all of us who work in that industry have always taken that to mean that it was correct for the purposes of the Real Property Act, but without having to go through any sort of 100-point check to establish that the people who came in and signed the document really were those people.

I must say that, in all the years that I did conveyancing, I never once had any doubt about the identity of the people I was representing, but the implication of the particular clause that the government had in its bill originally was that not only would I have to satisfy myself as to the correct identity of those people but also as to the identity of the other parties to the instrument, that is, the vendors' identity. The problem arose, of course, because at the time of the briefing on this bill, we were advised that the industry had been consulted and was in favour of it, but in fact the industry yelled loud and long that the particular provision that is now being deleted was a problem to them and that they had always indicated that it was a problem. I am pleased that the government has decided to withdraw it for the time being.

I recognise that there will be changes once we have electronic conveyancing, and I am glad that I got out of that area before we got to that point. We will sadly come to the point where we no longer have the beautiful certificates of title that we used to have (already we no longer have them) and eventually we will get to the point where conveyance will occur by pressing one button to ensure payment of the moneys and another to ensure the transfer of the title. It will all happen automatically and it will be a sad day as it was a pleasurable part of my former job to go to the Lands Titles Office on a weekly basis and participate in the numerous transactions that occurred in the settlements room, usually on a Friday every week, with lots of people who got on very well with a system that worked very well, albeit a very simple system.

I am sure we will have a lot more problems with conveyancing once we move to an electronic based system, and there will no doubt be all sorts of issues that arise, having not been corrected by people looking at documents and inspecting them, as we have had until now. I am pleased to see that the government has decided to support the suggestions made by the conveyancers that we not proceed to put this provision into the bill at this time.

Motion carried.


At 17:57 the house adjourned until Tuesday 6 May 2008 at 11:00.



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