Michael Murray and I recently presented at a roundtable discussion for the Australian Academy of Law and the Ross Parsons Centre for Commercial, Corporate and Taxation Law at Sydney Law School on the topic “The roles of the state and the private profession in the insolvency system: do we have the right balance?”. The roundtable including a range of senior practitioners from the law and insolvency professions, as well as several judges and fellows of the Academy.

The purpose of the roundtable was to discuss a law reform project that Michael and I have been working on that we plan to turn into a book next year called “Rethinking Insolvency Law”. Our project imagines starting again with a clean sheet to consider wholesale insolvency reform to better meet the needs of a modern economy. This will include rebalancing the distribution of public and private responsibilities in insolvency cases, considering the case for a greater role for government in corporate insolvency (through an Official Receiver’s office), dealing with the cost of insolvency procedures, low returns to creditors and creditor disengagement and how to deal with the more than 100 thousand companies that are de-registered every year.

The roundtable produced some excellent questions, so we thought that we would publish our responses on our respective websites to encourage public discussion on the need for wholesale insolvency reform.

Questions and Answers

Discussion paper for the roundtable

Slides

Diagram showing our proposed model

We would welcome comments and feedback.