Understanding the Lawfulness of Digital Signatures for Real Estate in Australia

How to eSign a document: digital signature lawfulness for Real Estate in Australia

just over the way here there's a couple of apartments facing directly up the sydney coastline facing north huge apartments they must be worth 10 million 15 million bucks each but the lights never on around australia's choicest property market destinations in sydney and melbourne particularly but gold coast too and other places prices have gone through the roof they've gone through the roof everywhere in the past few years now this is due to deliberate government policy inequality is on the rise we have two kinds of australians those with rich parents who can shoehorn their kids into a nice property and those that don't have that luxury no a lot of this is due to government policy things like negative gearing which allow all the investors to buy property after property with tax breaks a lot of it's due to land banking by property developers some of it's due to supply issues some of us due simply to the australian culture of home ownership but there's one thing which we could easily fix which the government successive governments indeed have been dithering about for 14 years now that is anti-money laundering legislation so-called aml ctf the second part of it is counter-terrorism financing because as greg medcraft a former chairman of the corporate regulator asic said he let slip australia is a paradise he said for white collar criminals now he must have got a call from matthias corman who was finance minister and shut him down straight away and he backtracked he said it to a few journalists and he quickly backtracked the cat was out of the bag because australia is a paradise for white collar criminals and part of the problem here is for younger australians that the explosion in black money for real estate developers accountants and lawyers means there's a lot of money black money indeed swishing around in australia's property market inflating the prices now every year we have a custom and that is to call whoever is in charge of this part of government the aml ctf the money laundering reforms because the first tranche of the money laundering reforms came in in 2006 the second part of these laws was meant to come in the next year another year is drawing to a close 14 years later and what's happened nothing so every year we ring the relevant minister's office and we ask what's going on with your tranche2 of the legislation which covers lawyers accountants and property developers this is the kind of response that we get a cost-benefit analysis of extending aml ctf regulation to certain non-financial business is well progressed and will be completed by july this year the outcome of the cost benefit analysis will inform the government's decision on the regulation of tranche2 entities under the aml ctf act now that was almost five years ago now that we got that response but every year we go in we went into carrick andrews who's the new minister following peter dutton the covers oztrack financial regulation stuff as far as money laundering goes we didn't even get a response from karen gutten was no better previous ministers generally this thing's thrown around like a hot potato it was in the ag's department before now it's in home affairs but this is the greatest dither and in fact while australia is dithering australia has joined the illustrious company of china mongolia madagascar mauritius and the us being the only six countries in the world that are not complying with global rules on anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing so if you're a terrorist bring your money in because you'll be able to wash it through australia if you're a chinese billionaire buy a couple of properties over here you won't have to tell anybody or anything like that you won't have to say where your money has come from you won't have to say that you took more than u.s 50 000 out of china which is not legal of course chinese investors and foreign investors generally they're not buying properties they can speculate on the sydney property market they're just parking their money they're hedging it this is an investment they buy something in the u.s they buy something in australia they are spreading their geographic risk by buying australian property which is sitting vacant when there are more people living below the poverty line in australia than ever they're not concerned about getting the best deal about paying 1.5 because the last guy paid 1.4 they'll just slap 10 on the table they just need to park the money to get it out of the country and this kind of price inflation pressure pushes prices up for everybody how much money is involved well we don't know because it's not being tracked by the regulator oztrack properly because there are no mandatory disclosure limits so if you're a lawyer if you're an accountant like the big four if you're a property developer you can just take money from anywhere put it into anything you just wash it yourself effectively now we've called the law council of australia about this just got a nothing response we've called the big four cans you know the peak body for the big four accountants nothing response these are the mysterious stakeholders that have been lobbying the government for 13 or 14 years to stop this second part of the legislation coming into place and so it is that property prices have gone through the roof it's not the only reason there are many many reasons but gee it's an easy fix now canada just a few days ago the prime minister justin trudeau is moving to ban foreign investment in residential property other than property which is used in a bona fide way for recreation so he's moving to ban that because this is a problem it is a huge problem of inequity it is soaking up supply the fact is it's an easy fix like this video if you'd like to see australia as a democracy not a plutocracy patreon itself does not allow us to engage in criminal acts or lawn the money through its platform so if you're not a terrorist and you're not a subscriber give us a few dollars now merry christmas to you [Music]