Case and statute law
Uniformity in corporate law – the High Court’s grant of special leave in Amerind
A comment in the Victorian Court of Appeal (VCA) decision in Amerind may not have found favour with Justice Gageler ...
Guardianship and bankruptcy – NSW law reform report misses the point?
A father who suffered a debilitating stroke left his son with the legal difficulty, in a quagmire of state and ...
Amerind – special leave granted
The story goes that a Supreme or Federal Court that convenes a larger bench than usual to hear a matter ...
One year bankruptcy and other changes – updated and corrected
[commentary of 10 August 2018 corrected and updated as at 14 August 2018]. With parliament having resumed on Monday 13 ...
Judicial inconsistency ‘should not be repeated’
The need for judicial consistency, between different appellate courts, was recently reiterated by the High Court in The Queen v ...
Insolvency and the environment – some law reform suggestions
While we await some pending developments in the areas of tension between insolvency law and environmental law, including the High ...
Bodies everywhere – the regulation of liquidators and trustees
One of the most unusual reforms introduced by Australia’s 2016 Insolvency Law Reform Act was to give a large number ...
A government liquidator, and more
Problems arising from Australia’s lack of a government liquidator have probably been hidden for some years by the choice of ...
The Chorley exception – barristers included
This is a postscript to an earlier post about the Chorley exception, a legal rule that although self-represented litigants are ...
Demands by liquidators – trying their luck, or “no ifs, buts or maybes”?
If anyone receives a letter from a liquidator of a company requesting, or demanding, important information, or payment of a ...
The perils of loud letters of demand
A creditor being paid its debt following a letter of demand can be a Pyrrhic victory, if the debtor ends ...
Family law and bankruptcy – ‘creditors should be expected in these times to be aware’…
The Civil Law and Justice Legislation Amendment Bill 2017 is before parliament, one purpose of its many amendments being both ...
ASIC’s annual ‘Dashboard’ report
With the 2018 financial year over, government agencies need to prepare their annual reports, which, commonly, are becoming increasingly opaque. ...
Review of ASIC’s Annual Report 2016-2017 – 22 June 2018
The House Standing Committee on Economics is conducting an inquiry into ASIC’s 2017 annual report, this Friday 22 June, in ...
Registration of a liquidator, on conditions – Mansfield
The AAT has confirmed that a corporate insolvency practitioner’s ‘exposure’ to bankruptcy as being one criterion required to be met ...
Questions of advantage and efficiency in assessing insolvency practitioner independence
In a further indication of the changing views of the judiciary in relation to the need for the independence of ...
The tax stories – history regurgitates
Australia’s new 2017 insolvency laws – described by one respected academic as the worst insolvency reforms he has seen in ...
Access by victims of crime to the perpetrator’s superannuation
Just as moneys in a bankrupt’s superannuation fund can in certain cases be used to pay their creditors, under the ...
Cross-border regulation of insolvency practitioners
The Insolvency Law Reform Act 2016 introduced a stronger regulatory regime over insolvency practitioners. It may not have been noticed ...
A contradictor in Mossgreen for the appeal hearing on 17 April
M: … An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. … Contradiction is just the ...
Linc Energy’s insolvency, environmental and constitutional issues are off to the High Court
The filing of a High Court special leave application[1] from the decision in Linc Energy[2] concerning the rights of liquidators ...
Judicial digs
The judgments of some judges are worthwhile reading for reasons apart from their legal content. Justice John Logan of the ...
A liquidator’s ‘overbearing approach’ did not pay
A “ham-fisted” response by a liquidator to an application by a director to terminate the liquidation of his company, has ...
Liquidators’ knowledge of bankruptcy law?
Do aspiring liquidators working in corporate insolvency practitioners really have an issue with the need to have some ‘exposure’ to ...
