PJC Enquiry into Corporate Insolvency Reports

The Parliamentary Join Committee into Corporate Insolvency in Australia issued their report today and while their recommendations are generally all rowing in the right direction, its disappointing that the vast majority of them boil down to 'this committee recommends the government form another committee to undertake another review and make further recommendations'.

On the bright side, immediate recommendations around clarifying the treatment of trusts in insolvency, the collection of better data by the ASIC, and the ATO publishing model creditor guidelines are all welcome reforms, that if implements, will help right now.

And while I'm also happy to see the idea of a comprehensive review finally gain some traction, given all the time and effort that went into this enquiry, I had hoped to see a few more concrete recommendations that could be implemented immediately.

Overall, it was great to see the government devote this level of attention to a niche area of law like insolvency, but I think there is significant risk that as the current government gets further into this term, competing priorities will divert their attention and the proposed comprehensive review will just never happen.  There are, frankly, a lot of bigger issues that are worth many more votes for them to devote their attention to, so it would have been better to bank a few more wins now, before there's any risk of the process losing momentum.

You can read the full report at: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Corporations_and_Financial_Services/CorporateInsolvency/Report