With much enthusiasm, the Australian Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon MP, recently released a discussion paper on potential reform of Australian contract law. What kind of reform? Well, at this early stage, pretty much everything is on the table!
One of the reasons that reform is being considered is that even across Australia, contract law is not the same in each individual jurisdiction. That, frankly, does not make a great deal of sense and harmonisation in this regard is most welcome.
In addition, contract law is struggling to keep up to date with the digital economy and there are far too many instances where we have to apply rules originally formulated centuries ago to the Internet age. As the discussion paper notes, applying existing principles, one could argue that in some web transactions no contract (in the legal sense) has been formed – not an ideal situation!
So that's all good, but given the currently poisonous climate between the State Attorneys General and Canberra, you'd have to say the chance of any harmonisation in laws is remote. And we do hope they don't mess with the force majeure rule, it's our favourite.
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