The Companies (Address Information) Amendment Bill

Late last month, Commerce Minister Andrew Bayly gave a speech that reiterated the new Government’s economic priorities and then concluded with a list of things to be done in the financial services sector.  Interesting, it concluded with an announcement of work to simplify, modernise, and digitise the Companies Act.

In an odd piece of timing, because of the ballot process involved, last week a [private] member’s bill emerged from the scrum that has its goal a single change to the Companies Act to allow directors to use an address for service where there would be a risk to making their home address publicly available.

Whilst piecemeal reform of important legislation is not always welcomed, this proposal is not new and has some support.

Overseas, the risks of doxxing and other anti-social behaviour has been recognised for some time.  In the UK, director residential addresses are protected, and Australia began moves in this direction with the introduction of Director Identification Numbers (DINs) in 2021.

Locally, MBIE first began consulting on the issues relating to the idea of protecting director privacy in 2018.

The member’s bill is promoted by Labour MP Deborah Russell.  A similar proposal was floated in 2021 by Brooke van Velden of ACT.

It is quite short and proposes to add a new section 360D to the Companies Act, enabling a company director to apply to the Registrar to replace the public details of their residential address – with a service address.  Unfortunately, the mechanism proposed by the member’s bill then gets bogged down in process noise – by requiring a director to verify (by means of a statutory declaration) that public availability of this information is likely to result in harm (physical or mental) to the director or their family.

This seems unnecessarily clunky.  Following similar models overseas, privacy (whether by means of a service address or, better still by use of a DIN which has an enhanced anti-fraud role) should be simple and available as of right.  There doesn’t seem to be any need for extensive form-filling in order to demonstrate why privacy is needed.

Therefore, whilst there are provisions in the Companies Act that need work and the Minister’s announcement at the end of January is welcomed, this is one item of piecemeal reform that is needed.  But it still needs work.  As a result, whilst the strike rate for member’s bills is still quite low, and it will require cross party support, the bill is one that could do with progression and public submissions – and some panel-beating through the Select Committee process.