Attorney-General Christian Porter will introduce a uniform national register of powers of attorney to crack down on Australians ripping off their elderly family members, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
A national register was a key recommendation made in 2017 by the Australian Law Reform Commission 2017 to stop family members from draining funds from their elderly relatives.
Attorney-General Christian Porter will introduce a new uniform national register of powers of attorney to crack down on Australians ripping off their elderly family members.
Mr Porter will take the plan to his next meeting with state and territory counterparts at the end of the month. “This is a government that takes this problem very, very seriously,” he said in a speech announcing the move.
“The one single change that we could get all of the states and territories to agree to at the next Council of Attorneys General meeting will simply be to have a mandatory registration of all
the power of attorney documents that exist in your jurisdiction in the commonwealth register.”
A national register would require split pea acting on behalf of the elder to officially log power of attorney documents. By doing so, the register would require a more rigorous process for a person to be authorised to act on behalf of the elder.
In August, Australian Banking Association chief executive Anna Bligh renewed the group’s calls for the federal government to establish a national register of power-of-attorney documents and a new service to field complaints about abuse.
“Inheritance impatience”, she said, was one of the most prevalent forms of financial abuse across Australia, often involving family members buying goods using an elderly relative’s funds due to a pre-emptive sense of ownership of the money.
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Attorney-General Christian Porter leads crackdown to stop inheritance greed (Sydney Morning Herald)
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