Page 383 - Week 01 - Thursday, 16 February 2012
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country for the economic dilemma our business communities face today. Employment opportunities are contracting. Our export industries are becoming less and less competitive and there are problems in the retail sector.
Will the national business registration scheme succeed, Madam Deputy Speaker? There is a problem—that is, there is a Labor government in charge of it. While we are hoping that we will have good outcomes for the community, I am not entirely sure given the track record of this government and the Gillard government.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (5.07): The Greens will be supporting this bill today, and it is good that finally, from a business names point of view, we have got to the point of federation more than 100 years after it happened. This bill is the ACT part of implementing a national business registration scheme. It is on the back of the intergovernmental agreement which was signed back in 2009 to have a national business names registration scheme. This is going to make life a lot easier for both consumers and businesses. Consumers have the problem at present that you can have multiple businesses by the same name in different states and territories but they may not, in fact, be the same business. Businesses have the same problem—they have a name, but there is someone else trading under that name somewhere and they have no relationship necessarily to that person. That person may or may not be doing something that is in any way supportive of their business. The idea of this bill is to provide national consistency to business name registration.
All currently registered ACT businesses will be automatically registered under the new system with ASIC—the Australian Securities and Investments Commission—and the bill allows the Office of Regulatory Services to provide these details to ASIC. There will be a transition period. ORS will manage new registrations and renewals up to about May this year. Businesses can challenge a decision by ORS in terms of the transfer of registration or cancelling a registration because it was up to two months after the changeover date. Of course, the movement of business names will be informed under the Privacy Act, so there will not be any inappropriate sharing of information.
Mrs Dunne has mentioned some of the positives of this—lower fees for registration and renewal. Probably these days equally relevant to businesses may be the fact that there will now be 24-hour online business name registration. Certainly most small businesses that I am aware of do all their bookwork after hours, online, if they possibly can. Businesses also will not have to register in each state and territory individually, and that will save a lot of effort for our businesses which are bigger than just the ACT, and a lot of ACT businesses are trading outside the ACT.
As I said earlier, there will be consumer protection because there will be only one business with a particular name. There will be a national register where this information can be searched. From a business point of view, the registration will occur at the same time as the ABN registration. All in all, I think this is a positive step forward for business in Australia. I think the only strange thing is that it has taken so long to achieve it.
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