Corporate Law Economic Reform Program - Proposals for Reform: Paper No. 7

Date

01 June 2000

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The Government is seeking comments from interested parties on the detail of the proposals in this paper. The comments should be forwarded to the following address:

General Manager	Telephone: 02 6263 3970
Corporate Governance and	Fax: 02 6263 2770
Accounting Policy Division The Treasury Parkes Place PARKES ACT 2600	Email: clerp@treasury.gov.au

Inquiries concerning the paper can be made to:

Mike Kooymans
02 6263 3984

Copies of this paper are available from AusInfo bookshops and on the Treasury website (http://www.treasury.gov.au).

Confidentiality

It will be assumed that submissions are not confidential and may be made publicly available. If you want your submission, or any part of it, to be treated as ‘confidential’, please indicate this clearly. A request made under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth) for a submission marked confidential to be made available will be determined in accordance with that Act.

Foreword

As the Minister responsible for Corporations Law, it gives me great pleasure to present the 7^th stage of the Government’s Corporate Law Economic Reform Program: CLERP 7 - Simplified Lodgments and Compliance.

The Government is committed to ensuring regulation does not impose unnecessary paperwork or other compliance burdens, and is responsive to business needs. Businesses, especially small businesses, want to get on with the job of

building their enterprises free from unnecessary red tape. We have demonstrated our commitment to these objectives by establishing the Small Business Deregulation Taskforce and implementing nearly all of its recommendations. The initiatives contained in this paper are a further illustration of our commitment in this respect.

The reforms proposed in this paper will further cut the compliance burden by streamlining the relationship between business and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. The initiatives are a further plank in the Government’s objective of providing a modern and efficient regulatory framework in which business and consumers can operate.

As with other CLERP reforms, these initiatives will help achieve efficiencies for business which in turn will encourage free enterprise and wealth creation for the benefit of all Australians.

I welcome feedback on our CLERP 7 initiatives and look forward to working with interested parties to progress these reforms.

Joe Hockey signature