Personal Property Securities in Australia

The Commonwealth Attorney-General has recently released a Consultation Draft of the Personal Property Securities Bill 2008 and an accompanying commentary. The Bill aims to provide a national system to regulate security interests in all property other than land, and would replace over 70 Commonwealth, State and Territory enactments.

As one can imagine, the Bill contains substantial provisions relating to choice of law (Part 2 Div 7) and jurisdiction (Part 11 Div 5).

In general, Australian law will apply to security over property located in Australia (s 45), and in other circumstances the law of the place where the grantor is located will apply (s 46). Specific rules are proposed regarding foreign intellectual property (s 47), minerals (s 48), investment instruments and non-negotiable documents of title (s 49), investment entitlements (s 50), and bank accounts (s 51). Rules will also cover circumstances where property is brought into or taken out of Australia (ss 52-33), or where the grantor relocates to another jurisdiction (s 54).

The Bill appears to envisage that foreign law may govern some aspects of personal property securities that are otherwise regulated by the Bill. If foreign law applies, the Bill only picks up the relevant foreign law governing the rights, obligations and duties of debtor (or grantor of security) against the secured party in relation to collateral (i.e. the property that is subject to the security) (s 43). This would, it seems, exclude aspects of the debtor-creditor relationship unrelated to security, and may also exclude foreign choice of law rules. However, the operation of these provisions is not entirely clear.

So far as jurisdiction is concerned, the Bill is unusual among Commonwealth enactment in excluding the operation of s 39B of the Judiciary Act 1903, and the Jurisdiction of the Courts (Cross-Vesting) Act 1987. Rather, the Bill contains its own provisions investing Australian state and federal courts with jurisdiction (s 261) and providing for the transfer of proceedings between courts (s 263).

The Attorney-General is seeking public comment on the Bill as a whole, and there are also specific questions raised for discussion. Questions relating to private international law include:

Does the common law [relating to jurisdiction of Australian courts] provide a sufficient jurisdiction for courts to act in relation to security interests?
To what extent should the Bill implement rules consistent with the Hague Securities Convention?
Are there any aspects of the Hague Securities Convention that should be omitted from the Bill (Australia could not adopt the Convention unless Australia’s domestic law was consistent with the convention).
Should the Bill require a securities intermediary who, in Australia, offers investment entitlements governed by the law of another country to operate an office in that other country of the kind contemplated by the Hague Securities Convention (and to comply with any licensing and other regulatory requirements that may exist in that other country concerning the operation of offices of that kind)?

The deadline for submissions is August 15th 2008. More information can be found here.