Australian International Disputes Centre

We had earlier written about rapid changes in the arbitration landscape in Australia. Improving on the same, the Australian International Disputes Centre was launched in Sydney on August 3rd, as part of a joint initiative by the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration and the Australian Commercial Disputes Centre and is backed by State and Federal governments.

The Centre offers a wide range of dispute resolution services ranging from arbitration and mediation to hybrid dispute resolution, facilitated negotiation and conciliation, among many others.

The launch of this Centre will give a further boost to Australia and especially Sydney as a commercial hub, competing with other Asia-Pacific dispute resolution Centres in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Agreement between ACICA and PCA

We had recently discussed changes in the arbitration law of Australia. The Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration (ACICA) is taking further strides in the field of arbitration. It recently signed an agreement with the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) to promote the utilisation and education of arbitration in the Asia-Pacific region.

The PCA is the world's oldest inter-governmental organisation for international dispute resolution. This agreement would go a long way to improve the functioning of the PCA in the Asia-Pacific and foster arbitration in general, in the region.

Details of the agreement were announced a week ago just before the commencement of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA) Global Congress.

More details on this landmark agreement can be found here.

Australia to overhaul its arbitration law

In a previous post, we had discussed some proposed amendments to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act. India appears to be not the only country currently engaged in the exercise of completely overhauling its arbitration laws. On 7th May (Friday), the Office of the Attorney General for Australia published a press release welcoming the decision by the Standing Committee of the Attorneys - General to adopt uniform national laws on domestic arbitration. 

Under the current Australian framework, international arbitration is governed by the International Arbitration Act, 1974, a federal statute, and domestic arbitration is governed by the Commercial Arbitration Act (CCA), as adopted by each of the six States and two Territories. Though some uniform provisions have been incorporated into the CCA through amendments of 1984 and 1993, the provisions of CAA vary largely from one State to another.

The new Model Commercial Arbitration Bill is based on the UNCITRAL Model Law and its adoption by all the States and Territories is expected to result in uniformity not only between the arbitration laws of different provinces but also between the legal frameworks governing international and domestic arbitrations.

The text of the Model Bill does not appear to have been made available to the public yet. It is interesting to note that the adoption of the Model Bill has followed an announcement by the Commonwealth and the New South Wales Government of the establishment of a dedicated international dispute resolution center based in Sydney.