A cynical liquidator comments on recent insolvency law reform

A missed opportunity for some real reform.

Today, the full raft of provisions in the Insolvency Law Reform Act 2016 (ILRA) became effective. The changes mark the biggest wholesale changes to the insolvency laws in the last 20 years. The law reform was also a decade in the making with several changes stemming from recommendations made in a Senate report into the insolvency industry from 2010.

With 10 years of planning and the ILRA's final version being a voluminous 395-pages you would have been excused for thinking creditors and practitioners were about to enter a Utopian era ... A place where unnecessary red-tape is non-existent, where phoenix activity and abuse of process by directors and their advisors is eliminated, and where insolvency practitioners have necessary protections to vigorously pursue and investigate actions.