Today the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer announced the release of draft regulations to implement a part of the Government’s plans to reform and modernise Australia’s insolvency framework.

The Secretary said that the establishment of a corporate insolvency notices website is aimed at reducing the costs borne by companies under external administration and provide a central repository for creditors with information on upcoming corporate insolvency events.

The draft Corporations Legislation Amendment Regulations 2012 set out the new requirements to lodge documents with ASIC for publication on the ASIC Insolvency Notices website. The draft regulations also contain details of the fees for lodgment. They have been released for consultation and may be viewed here.  The Explanatory Statement may be viewed here. The closing date for submissions is 1 June 2012 – a notably tight deadline.

The ASIC Insolvency Notices website is scheduled to go live on 1 July 2012, and is expected to replace 53,000 newspaper advertisements over the next 4 years. This is estimated to deliver approximately $15million in savings to industry over that period.