Electronic settlement runs on one national law, the Electronic Conveyancing National Law, which each state and territory has put into effect through its own legislation. The detailed rules come from ARNECC, the council of land titles registrars: it writes model rules for the networks and for the people who use them, and each registrar determines them as the rules for its own land registry.
General informationGeneral information about the framework, not legal advice about any sale. The framework’s own pages are on ARNECC’s site, and each state’s land registry publishes the rules that apply there, as Land Use Victoria does for Victoria.
One agreement, one council
The framework rests on an intergovernmental agreement the states and territories made in 2011, known as the Electronic Conveyancing National Law Agreement. That agreement set up the Australian Registrars’ National Electronic Conveyancing Council, ARNECC, to help put the regulatory framework for electronic conveyancing in place and to manage it from then on. Its members are the land titles registrars, or their nominees, of each state and territory that entered the agreement.
ARNECC lists four principal functions:
- advising the state and territory governments on any proposed change to the national law
- developing and publishing the Model Operating Requirements and Model Participation Rules the law provides for
- giving the states and territories authoritative advice on electronic conveyancing
- keeping business practice in electronic conveyancing as consistent as is practicable between the registrars’ jurisdictions.
Its objectives page adds two more duties: developing any amendments to those model rules, and reviewing how the legal framework operates generally.
One law, in each place’s own Act
The national law was first enacted in NSW, as an appendix to the Electronic Conveyancing (Adoption of National Law) Act 2012. The other states and territories followed with one of two kinds of Act. Application legislation adopts the NSW appendix itself; corresponding legislation is an Act essentially the same as it. The law took effect place by place, as each one’s legislation was proclaimed.
| Place | Act | Kind of Act | Proclaimed |
|---|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | Electronic Conveyancing (Adoption of National Law) Act 2012 | Application (the national law is its appendix) | 1 January 2013 |
| Victoria | Electronic Conveyancing (Adoption of National Law) Act 2013 | Application | 14 March 2013 |
| Queensland | Electronic Conveyancing National Law (Queensland) Act 2013 | Application | 17 May 2013 |
| Northern Territory | Electronic Conveyancing (National Uniform Legislation) Act 2013 | Application | 17 July 2013 |
| Tasmania | Electronic Conveyancing (Adoption of National Law) Act 2013 | Application | 19 November 2013 |
| South Australia | Electronic Conveyancing National Law (South Australia) Act 2013 | Corresponding | 21 January 2016 |
| Australian Capital Territory | Electronic Conveyancing National Law (ACT) Act 2020 | Application | 13 May 2020 |
A law in force is not the same as a working network. Tasmania’s Act was proclaimed in November 2013, but Land Tasmania says electronic conveyancing has been available there from August 2024. Transactions are prepared and lodged through an electronic lodgment network operator, and one has been approved and licensed to operate in Tasmania.
Two rulebooks from one model
Under the national law, the networks and the people who use them answer to two separate sets of rules, each determined by the registrar of the place from an ARNECC model.
For the network operators
An electronic lodgment network is a network for creating registry documents and lodging them electronically with a land registry; its operator is the legal entity a jurisdiction authorises to run it there.
Operators must comply with the Operating Requirements, which the registrar determines under section 22 of the national law from ARNECC’s Model Operating Requirements.
For the subscribers
A subscriber is a legal entity registered to use a network to complete conveyancing transactions, for itself or on behalf of a party to the transaction. Titles Queensland gives legal practitioners and financial institutions as examples.
Subscribers must comply with the Participation Rules, which the registrar determines under section 23 from ARNECC’s Model Participation Rules.
NSW’s Registrar General says it adopted both models as ARNECC approved them, changing them only to refer to NSW legislation where that was needed, and each subscriber in NSW also signs a participation agreement with its network operator. In Victoria, the national law lets the Registrar of Titles either run a network or approve operators to run one.
Beside the rules, ARNECC publishes guidance notes, advice issued for all the registrars to help operators and subscribers meet their obligations, and notices, which reach subscribers through their network operator on one specific point of the framework.
Waivers, examinations and enforcement
A registrar can give relief from the rules. ARNECC defines a waiver as an instrument a registrar publishes under section 27 of the national law, relieving an operator or subscriber, or a class of them, from all or any of the rules in that place. NSW’s Registrar General may waive compliance where it is reasonable to do so.
Checking is done by compliance examination: a procedure under section 33 of the national law to find out whether the rules have been followed and, where relevant, to investigate suspected misconduct in using a network. Subscribers must comply with an examination under both the national law and the Participation Rules. Victoria follows a nationally consistent subscriber compliance program approved by ARNECC, which asks subscribers for evidence that they have met their obligations. In Tasmania, every lodgment with the Land Titles Office is subject to compliance examination.
In NSW, an operator needs the Registrar General’s approval to run a network there, and the Electronic Conveyancing Enforcement Act 2022 (NSW) lets the Registrar General act against an operator that breaches the national law, the Operating Requirements or its conditions of approval. The action available includes enforceable undertakings, remedial directions and enforcement orders.
Where a buyer or seller meets it
ARNECC describes national electronic conveyancing as providing for three things done electronically: preparing registry documents, settling property transactions, and lodging documents with land registries. Its name for a buyer or seller is a transacting party: a person or corporation in a land transaction, over land on a Torrens title register, that will end in documents being lodged with the land registry.
The rules reach a buyer or seller through the person acting for them. In NSW a buyer engages a lawyer or licensed conveyancer who is a subscriber to a network to settle electronically on their behalf, and it is that subscriber the Participation Rules bind and a compliance examination checks.