With a recent influx of federal and state government funding, and the world’s largest green hydrogen project pipeline in place, Australia is well positioned to become a leading hydrogen producer and exporter. However, one outstanding aspect of this nascent industry – which could influence its future success – is the development of an internationally recognised certification scheme.
Our Asia Pacific Employment & Compensation Team is pleased to provide you with our second quarterly update for 2021 highlighting key employment law changes across the Asia Pacific region.
In this overview, we throw a spotlight on some of the many promising technological advances in the agriculture industry and highlight the intellectual property rights that may be available both to incentivise and protect these technological advances.
On 1 July 2021, the Wage Theft Act 2020 (Vic) will come into effect. The Act makes it a crime for an employer to deliberately underpay employees, to dishonestly withhold employee entitlements or to fail to keep proper records of employee entitlements in order to gain a financial advantage. These crimes are punishable by a fine of up to AUD 198,264 or 10 years jail for individuals, and a fine of up to AUD 991,320 for companies.
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has access to data from the Department of Home Affairs on passenger movements from the 2016-17 to 2022-23 financial years (being 1 July 2016 to 30 June 2023). The ATO estimates that details of approximately 670,000 individuals will be obtained each financial year.
On 15 June 2021, the UK Government announced that the UK has secured a trade deal with Australia eliminating tariffs on all UK goods and boosting jobs and businesses across the country, in the first major trade deal negotiated from scratch by the Government since the UK left the EU. The announcement said that the main elements of the deal were agreed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison at a meeting in Downing Street on 14 June. A final Agreement in Principle will be published in the coming days.
In this era of rapid digitalization the physical structures that facilitate the efficient transmission, storage and processing of data have increasingly critical roles to play in meeting our exponential growth in data usage. As digital infrastructure scales up, so does interest in investing into this new asset class, especially by long-term private capital investors.
The 2021 edition of Duties and Liabilities of Directors of Australian Companies from Baker McKenzie is a timely guide for directors of Australian companies, setting out pivotal issues for directors to consider in the current evolving corporate governance environment. Matters covered in the guide include common law and statutory duties, delegation, financial reporting, continuous disclosure, financial assistance, directors’ insurance and indemnities and other topical issues including climate change, whistleblower protections and anti-bribery and corruption.
The 2021 edition of Duties and Liabilities of Directors of Australian Companies from Baker McKenzie is a timely guide for directors of Australian companies, setting out pivotal issues for directors to consider in the current evolving corporate governance environment. Matters covered in the guide include common law and statutory duties, delegation, financial reporting, continuous disclosure, financial assistance, directors’ insurance and indemnities and other topical issues including climate change, whistleblower protections and anti-bribery and corruption.
We are pleased to introduce the third part of our trilogy of brief commentaries on Investment Treaty Protection & Covid-19 driven State Intervention. The present Part III is devoted to the defenses, which the host states may use to respond to the potential investors’ claims against the measures.