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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-12-03 Daily Xml
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National Power of Attorney Register

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (14:41): My question is to the Attorney-General. Can the Attorney explain what time frames are intended for what is referred to as a staged approach to the reform of enduring powers of attorney and the establishment of a national register for such instruments as per the communiqué of the recent meeting of the Council of Attorneys-General held in Adelaide?

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General) (14:42): I thank the member for her question because she demonstrated her interest last week in advancing both the harmonisation and the establishment of a national register in relation to powers of attorney. It's an important initiative. It has been under discussion at the Council of Attorneys-General over the time that I have been privileged to be at those meetings. This year, we have held two meetings in Adelaide, which I have had the responsibility to chair.

The advance of this initiative, I think, will be very significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, powers of attorney are written differently in every state. They are an important instrument because, when properly constructed and authorised, they provide a secure letter of intent, or document of intent, of appointment for somebody to handle the financial affairs of another, usually when they are facing a period of diminished capacity or might simply be overseas and away and need to have someone attend to their financial matters.

Historically, in South Australia that has been a document which has been prepared in a registrable form, that is, recognised and able to be accepted by the lands titles office. I think we have a pretty high standard in South Australia and I think we have a pretty good system. What has happened increasingly, though, is that there are numbers of powers of attorney that are prepared that never go to the lands titles office for a number of reasons. Firstly, they are not mandatory. Secondly, somebody might not own real estate, in which case they have nothing to register the power of attorney against for it to be recognised. So there is a deficiency in that regard.

This is one of the reasons why we need to have a national register—so that anyone can identify if a document exists, if a person has been appointed, if it has been validly dated and signed and is on that register. The important initiative that happened last Friday in this regard was that the commonwealth Attorney-General, Christian Porter, confirmed that his government were prepared to establish and maintain a register.

The cost of that is obviously always something that is under discussion, but that is a commitment he has made. Obviously, as states, we have made a commitment to populate it with information that is sufficiently across the jurisdictions, that is able to be registered in a form to the extent of the areas of consistency.

By that, I simply mean that, although there are different rules around the establishment of, signatures on and legality of powers of attorney, essentially, having a power of attorney that is signed and dated by the relevant parties—that is, the person granting the power of attorney and the person receiving it—and the recording of its existence, the names of the parties and obviously the dating of it, is very important to add to the validity and the status of that document.

It doesn't interfere with any claims that may be made in relation to whether a signature has been obtained under duress as a result of a fraud or anything like that. Those things will always be available to challenge the validity of a document. This was designed to be a useful tool, and I think it will be a useful tool, for people to be able to understand whether there is somebody who has that valid authority to act and whether that can be relied on. That has been called for, and I thank the member for her advocacy in that regard.

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