Inquiry into the exposure draft of the Business Names Registration Bill 2011 and related bills
Information about the Inquiry
On 06 July 2011 the Senate referred the following matter to the Senate Economics Committees for inquiry and report.
a) Draft Business Names Registration Bill 2011;
b) Draft Business Names Registration (Transitional and Consequential Provisions) Bill 2011; and
c) Draft Business Names Registration (Fees) Bill.
The legislation gives effect to the establishment of a National Business Names Register, which is one element of a COAG initiative and forms part of COAG's Seamless National Economy agenda. The proposed key changes include:
- the national registration of business names, thus there will no longer be a need to register in each State a business trades in;
- central administration by ASIC, which is currently responsible for the registration of companies;
- lower fees for registration and renewal as well as options for one or three year registration periods;
- the ability of business owners to apply to register a national business name online and receive confirmation of their registration at the same time;
- the availability of joint online registration of a business name in conjunction with the Australian Business Number (ABN) registration with pre-filling from one registration to the next;
- information on and links to the trade mark and domain name searches; and
- businesses with an ABN can register for an AUSkey, a single key to access government online services.
As part of these changes, business will be required to:
- have an ABN or be in the process of applying for an ABN and not have been refused an ABN in order to register a business name;
- display their entity name and ABN on all correspondences and communications (where not related to internal communication); and
- ensure that new business names are not identical or near identical to already existing business names.
The Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR) conducted a public consultation process into the exposure drafts in March-April 2011.
Submissions should be received by 22 July 2011. The reporting date is 15 August 2011.
The Committee is seeking written submissions from interested individuals and organisations preferably in electronic form submitted online or sent by email to economics.sen@aph.gov.au as an attached Adobe PDF or MS Word format document. The email must include full postal address and contact details.
Alternatively, written submissions may be sent to:
Department of the Senate
PO Box 6100
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Australia
Notes to help you prepare your submission are available from the website at https://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/wit_sub/index.htm. Alternatively, the Committee Secretariat will be able to help you with your inquiries and can be contacted on telephone +61 2 6277 3540 or facsimile +61 2 6277 5719 or by email to economics.sen@aph.gov.au.
Inquiries from hearing and speech impaired people should be directed to Parliament House TTY number 02 6277 7799. Adobe also provides tools at http://access.adobe.com/ for the blind and visually impaired to access PDF documents. If you require any special arrangements to enable you to participate in the Committee's inquiry, please contact the Committee Secretariat.
Once the Committee accepts your submission, it becomes a confidential Committee document and is protected by Parliamentary Privilege. You must not release your submission without the Committee's permission. If you do, it will not be protected by Parliamentary Privilege. At some stage during the inquiry, the Committee normally makes submissions public and places them on its website. Please indicate if you want your submission to be kept confidential.
For further information, contact: Department of the Senate
PO Box 6100
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Australia