Identifying complexity in financial services legislation

In 2022, the ALRC is undertaking a number of projects to identify aspects of complexity in corporations and financial services legislation. These projects will provide legislators with a reform menu and allow complexity to be appropriately managed over time. The projects focus on themes of redundancy, legislative hierarchy, and duplication and build on the ALRC’s use of computational analysis in Interim Report A and research in Background Paper FSL2.

• Redundancy: The ALRC is reviewing 27 corporations and financial services Acts to identify redundant provisions that could be repealed. The ALRC’s review has already identified over 300,000 words of redundant legislation.
• Legislative hierarchy: The ALRC is undertaking a number of targeted projects to support the consistency and navigability of the legislative hierarchy for corporations and financial services legislation. For example, the ALRC is identifying notional amendments that can be consolidated into the provisions they are amending, thereby improving the accessibility of the law.
• Duplication: The ALRC is reviewing corporations and financial services legislation to identify unnecessary duplication, the reduction of which will support clear, coherent and effective legislation. The work involves a mix of computational and manual analysis of the legislation. The project is considering opportunities for consolidation or use of standardised regimes.