The 2017 Budget included proposals intended to reduce pressure on housing affordability Two of them use the superannuation system to do so the First Home Super Saver Scheme and the Reducing Barriers to Downsizing proposal Partner Michelle Levy examines the schemes in more detail ...

In a recent decision of the Victorian Supreme Court a Melbourne municipal council was held liable to compensate a landowner for the costs that were incurred by the landowner in the course of complying with a clean-up notice issued under the Environment Protection Act 1970 Vic despite the pollution ...

Last month we were fortunate enough to host Barney Frank co-architect of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act 2010 to discuss financial regulation reform Coincidentally a couple of weeks later we were treated to a presentation on US financial regulation reforms by a US ...

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has granted relief to assist responsible entities of registered schemes to make changes to their constitutions to qualify for the new attribution managed investment trust regime without holding a members meeting In addition and in response to ...

The regulatory law repercussions of the GFC remain endlessly fascinating As an example take the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act 2010 It runs to 848 pages Title VII addresses perhaps optimistically Wall Street Transparency and Accountability My favourite provision is section ...

The Government has finally begun the process of implementing its policy on crowd-sourced equity funding CSEF by introducing a Bill and releasing draft exposure regulations late last year which envisage the establishment of a CSEF regime in Australia The Bill has been referred to the Senate Economics ...

Our class actions team recently published our Class Action Risk 2016 report The objective of the report is to look behind the headlines and hype that often surrounds class actions to provide a more holistic and objective assessment of class action risk for our clients This is particularly important ...

With the release of an ASFA Best Practice Paper on insourcing investment management we look at some of the challenges and opportunities for in-house legal teams that come with the seemingly inexorable move in the superannuation industry towards insourcing investment management functions ...

The idea that the UK could on leaving the EU simply walk away from a significant amount of EU financial services regulation seems fantastical It is likely that the UK will instead have to adopt on exit vast amounts of EU financial services regulation However the UK will have no say on the future ...

The Reserve Bank has now released a Standard which sets out what payment surcharges will be permitted for the purposes of the new Part IVC of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 Cth The aim of the Standard is to improve competition and efficiency by providing to consumers price signals associated ...