Ann: PEXA Group Response to ARNECC Ministerial Forum, page-37

From 'The Australian' online half an hour ago:

(a standoff that will continue to benefit PXA):

"The federal government has called on the state and territory governments to use all available powers to open e-conveyancing up to competition following calls from the NSW Productivity Commission to end PEXA’s monopoly swiftly.

Governments have been pushing to break up PEXA’s dominance by forcing it to allow its systems to operate with those run by challengers such as Sympli — owned by ASX and InfoTrack.

The process has been the subject of frequent delays, and hit another hurdle after state governments last week called on the Commonwealth to intervene and force competition. The Australian Registrars National Electronic Conveyancing Council (ARNECC) then halted all work on the interoperability program because aspects were “beyond the remit of state and territories”.

Federal Assistant Competition Minister Andrew Leigh has criticised states and territories for delays in bringing greater competition in e-conveyancing space, adding the federal government would only step in once ARNECC used all available powers.

“Ultimately this has arisen because states and territories made an ill-considered decision to privatise a public monopoly, which is now behaving as our economics textbooks would lead us to expect,” he said.

“The first step is for ARNECC to ensure that it uses all of the available powers. At the moment the states and territories haven’t used all their available powers, a...."