For those lucky enough not to have to deal with CLERPs 1 through 9 (the Australian Corporate Law Economic Reform Program), apart from having one of the worst sounding acronyms known, these programs have represented some of the largest expansions of regulation in Australian corporate history, with CLERPs 3, 6 and 9 being particularly noteworthy.

Much of it did not relate to other parts well and, considering the volume of some of these changes it is probably suprising that they actually fitted together at all. Anyway, some of the bigger anomolies finally have proposals to address them, in this proposals paper.

To be honest, this is really not that exciting. For example, the changes will not make it easier to get an Australian Financial Services License, or reduce the compliance burden once you have one. What it will do is allow you, in certain circumstances, not to have to hand out the pieces of paper that very few read any way.

There are a total of 35 proposals in here – each seems sensible but a comprehensive reform program, designed to lift some of the real weight of compliance from financial services companie

s this is not.