Hundreds of Australian Securities and Investments Commission staff (ASIC) transferred to the Australian Taxation Office for the build of the Modernising Business Registers (MBR) project are now being sent back to their original workplace after the upgrade was unceremoniously scrapped earlier this year.
More than 220 ATO employees, predominantly from the Traralgon service centre in Victoria’s now transitioning coal and electricity generation belt in the Latrobe Valley, have been told their positions are being sent back to ASIC as a result of a decision by the government.
“As part of the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO), the Government has announced a Machinery of Government (MoG) change that will see responsibility of some registry services (including company and business name registrations) move from the ATO to ASIC. Some ATO employees will also move as part of this MoG change,” the ATO told directly impacted employees.
“This change follows the Government’s decision, announced in August, to cease the Modernising Business Registers Program. While a firm date is yet to be confirmed, we are working towards the MoG change taking effect in May 2024.”
The grand plan under the Modernising Business Registers project had been to largely digitise and standardise what were, and are now again, ASIC’s mish-mash of different corporate and business so they could be far more efficiently operated and interrogated.
The corporate regulator has historically struggled with upgrading its registry databases because there are just so many of them, built on different platforms and requiring different skill sets.
A further complication is that the tech talent required for these projects is highly sought after by banks and financial markets organisations, who themselves are struggling with their own transactional and registry platforms.
This said, there have been major breakthroughs, like the successful creation of the Director ID credential that enables transparency and a single source of truth for which corporate officers have their fingers in what pies (and whether they have changed their names to avoid bans).
The Director ID reform is regarded as critical in terms of preventing and spotting corporate phoenixing, a known modus operandi for crooks.
The fate of the Traralgon service centre has generated plenty of controversy previously.
In 2014, the Abbott government attempted to flog its operations off to private operators, much to the horror of Nationals MP for Gippsland Darren Chester, who publicly opposed the move and helped scuttle it with some support from the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU).
Abbott was then succeeded by Malcolm Turnbull, who had previously repeatedly advocated for ASIC registry holdings to be made available to the public and media for free, rather than imposed fees, and was hardly sold on selling them off.
Some of Traralgon’s functions are essentially manually processing paper applications, notifications, cheques, letters, forms and queries necessitated by the disparate nature of what are now, again, ASIC’s registries.
Telling staff of the MoG, both ASIC and the ATO made it plain life hasn’t been easy.
“The ATO and ASIC executive teams would like to acknowledge the value and impact of registry employees in recent years. Your contributions have been substantial, and the high-quality service you’ve delivered and continue to deliver plays a critical role for Australia’s business community,” an ATO notice to affected staff said.
“Our focus is on supporting employees and continuing to deliver quality registration services to the business community throughout this transition period.”
It is understood that the MoG changes are, so far, slated to take effect around May 2024, and while it’s unlikely that there will be redundancies, staff now covered by the ATO enterprise agreement will transfer back to the ASIC enterprise agreement as part of the shift.
That date means new enterprise agreements should be in place by the time staff are moved.
The question as to whether the Traralgon site will be maintained after it was transferred to ATO is a bit of an open question, but staff have been told in a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) sheet that “the current lease in the Traralgon site is secured until 31 August 2025”.
The specific question of whether “ASIC’s decision to no longer have an office in Traralgon now be reconsidered?” is a bit more open-ended.
“At this stage, ASIC is still considering how the MoG decision impacts future leasing arrangements and will provide an update when more information is known.”
What is known is that it’s back to the drawing board for whatever MBR was meant to be.
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