Key points

• The purpose of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Business Registries Stabilisation and Uplift) Bill 2026 (the Bill) is to amend the Corporations Act 2001 and other legislation in the Treasury portfolio to strengthen Director ID requirements, provide ASIC new powers to manage its registers and to repeal legacy provisions from the Modernising Business Registers (MBR) program.
• Schedule 1 of the Bill will strengthen Director ID requirements and link them with ASIC’s Companies Registers.
• Schedule 2 of the Bill will provide ASIC new powers to deregister companies, disclose, publish and correct information on its registers and control access to registry information.
• Directors will be able to provide an alternative address in place of their usual residential address on ASIC documentation.
• Schedule 3 of the Bill will repeal legacy provisions from the MBR program so responsibility for administering business registers remain with ASIC.
• The Bill has been referred to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 17 June 2026.

Introductory Info

Date of introduction: 14 May 2026
House introduced in: House of Representatives
Portfolio: Treasury
Commencement: Various dates as set out in the body of this Bills Digest

Purpose of the Bill

The purpose of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Business Registries Stabilisation and Uplift) Bill 2026 (the Bill) is to amend the Corporations Act 2001 (the Act), the Treasury Laws Amendment (Registries Modernisation and Other Measures) Act 2020 (Registries Modernisation Act) and other legislation in the Treasury portfolio to:

• link Director Identification Numbers (Director ID) to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (ASIC) Companies Register
• provide ASIC with new powers to manage the updated business registers
• repeal legacy provisions from the terminated Modernising Business Registers (MBR) program.

Commencement

Date of effect	Schedule	Part
Day after Royal Assent	Schedule 1	Parts 2 to 5
	Schedule 2	Part 1
		Part 3 – Divisions 1 and 3
		Parts 4 to 8
30 June 2026	Schedule 3	All
1 July 2027	Schedule 1	Part 1
	Schedule 2	Part 3 – Division 2
The earlier of proclamation and 1 July 2027	Schedule 2	Part 2

Source: Treasury Laws Amendment (Business Registries Stabilisation and Uplift) Bill 2026

Structure of the Bill

The Bill consists of 3 schedules:

• Schedule 1 amends the Act and Commonwealth Registers Act 2020 (CR Act) to:
  • strengthen Director ID requirements (Parts 1 and 3)
  • give ASIC the power to disqualify directors who do not obtain a Director ID (Part 2)
  • enable ASIC to publish and correct Director ID information on its registers (Part 4).
• Schedule 2 amends the Act, Commonwealth Registers Act 2020, Business Names Registration Act 2011, National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 and Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993 to provide ASIC new powers to:
  • deregister companies that provide misleading information (Part 1)
  • manage and update digital registers (Parts 2 and 4)
  • expand electronic communications with users (Part 3)
  • disclose and publish information on the registers in the public interest (Part 5)
  • control access to registry information (Part 6)
  • allow information sharing with ASIC by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) (Part 7).
• Schedule 3 repeals legacy provisions from the MBR program so responsibility for administering the business registers remain with ASIC. See the Bill’s Explanatory Memorandum (EM) for the full list of amended Acts (para 3.5).

Schedules 2 and 3 implement the Government’s response to the 2023 Independent Review of the Modernising Business Registers Program (the 2023 Review).

Background

Modernising Business Registers

The MBR program was announced on 9 August 2017 as part of the National Business Simplification Initiative - a Commonwealth-led agreement between federal, state and territory governments to simplify doing business in Australia.

The Treasury consulted on the MBR program twice: firstly in August 2017 to seek feedback from stakeholders on their experiences with the business registers; and again in July 2018 to seek feedback regarding proposed solutions.

As detailed in the 2018 discussion paper, the main issues identified with business registers were (p. 3):

• high compliance costs and regulatory burden due to users needing to interact with multiple registers which often provided the same information
• lack of harmonisation of business data collection and authentication requirements due to distribution of registry accountabilities across different regulators, which led to issues of data integrity
• ageing IT infrastructure underpinning the registers would not be sufficient to meet future demand
• restrictive legislation limited ASIC’s ability to communicate and interact with users.

Utilising the feedback from consultation, the MBR program mobilised in 2019 with the enabling package of legislation (MBR legislation) receiving Royal Assent on 22 June 2020. According to the Bill’s EM, the MBR program aimed to streamline administration of government business registers, improve efficacy of registry systems and data quality by creating a centralised registry platform for over 30 registers to be administered by the Registrar through the Australian Business Registry Services (ABRS) established within the ATO. The commencement date for the majority of the MBR legislation was 24 months after Royal Assent (i.e., 22 June 2022), including transferring responsibility for administering registers from ASIC to the ATO (p. 6). On 4 April 2021, the Commissioner of Taxation was appointed as the Registrar of the ABRS (p. 15).

Due to delay in the MBR program, the commencement date was postponed until 1 July 2026 through the Treasury Laws Amendment (2022 Measures No. 1) Act 2022.

Independent review and cessation

The MBR program was initially projected to completed by the 2023-24 financial year at a cost of $480.5 million. However, in July 2022, the Government was informed that the MBR program would cost an extra $1 billion with completion pushed out to 2027 (p. 5). In response, on 9 February 2023, the Government commissioned the 2023 Review, which was published on 28 August 2023.

According to the 2023 Review:

There are 4 broad categories of drivers resulting in a divergence between the [business case] and the current state of the MBR program.

• Complexity: A significant underestimation of program complexity (with the current costs of the MBR Program approximately 5 times the amount estimated in the [business case]).
• Program design: A range of MBR Program design choices and assumptions including those associated with the commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) product.
• Delivery and implementation approach: Delivery and implementation challenges that have impacted progress.
• External factors: External factors impacting mobilisation of resources, and movements in assumed labour rates.

…

Importantly, the mobilisation of a large-scale workforce … ahead of resolving key positions such as further law change to support the aims of transformed service design, has contributed to the exhaustion of allocated funding and the continuation of high cost of delays. (pp. 5–6)

The 2023 Review then made the following recommendation:

The Review concludes that the most responsible and best available option for government is to stop the MBR Program on the basis that the considerable additional investment is not justified when measured against the benefits.

Instead, the Review recommends the return of registry functions from ATO to a new division in ASIC. (p. 1)

In response to the review, the Government announced the cessation of the MBR program on 28 August 2023. As the commencement date of the MBR legislation was postponed, registry functions remained mostly with ASIC (except for the Australian Business Register and ABRS). ASIC is currently progressing the uplift and stabilisation of business registers through its RegistryConnect program.

Director ID

The Director ID regime was announced on 12 September 2017 by the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services, Kelly O’Dwyer. It was part of a package of reforms to combat illegal phoenix activity, which occurs when a company is liquidated, wound up or abandoned to avoid paying its debts and a new company is created to continue the same activities without the debt. The Director ID regime was a recommendation from the Productivity Commission’s 2015 final report on Business Set-up, Transfer and Closure (see Recommendation 15.6).

According to the Productivity Commission, a Director ID regime would:

 … enable the monitoring of director registration (including the detection of disqualified or fraudulent directors), the collection of data regarding director appointments over time (to establish patterns of director involvement in repeat business failures) and detection of possible fraudulent and phoenix activity … (p. 28)

The Director ID regime was introduced in the Registries Modernisation Act alongside the other MBR legislation. The Director ID is a unique, lifelong identifier issued to individuals appointed as directors or acting alternative directors of companies and entities registered under the Act and the Corporations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) Act 2006. The Director ID regime is administered by the ABRS and has applied since November 2021 (EM, p. 4).

Policy position of non-government parties/independents

At time of writing, no non-government parties nor independents have stated a policy position on the proposed changes to Director ID and ASIC powers.

Stakeholder comments

Public submissions responding to the consultation on the draft legislation were largely supportive of the proposed changes to Director ID and its linkage with the ASIC Companies Register. However, several stakeholder groups raised concerns with the new ASIC powers proposed in the Bill (discussed further below).

Key issues and provisions

Schedule 1 – Enhancing Director ID requirements

Under the Bill, Director ID is listed as part of a director or alternative director’s personal details that companies are required to provide to ASIC (items 1,2,4 and 8). When a company is registered, a new director is appointed, details of an existing director change or a person ceases being a director, the company is required to lodge a notice to ASIC within 28 days (see subsections 205B(1), (2), (4) and (5) of the Act). Consequently, Director IDs are part of the information that directors must provide to their company within 7 days of appointment or when details change (see section 205C of the Act). An extra period is given to directors who do not have a Director ID when they are appointed . They are required to provide their Director ID to their company within 7 days of receiving it from the Registrar (see proposed subsection 205C(4), at item 7).

The Governance Institute (GI) raised concerns regarding the timeframe:

…the proposed period within which a director is required to notify a company of their Director ID is seven days ... In our members’ experience this period is too short. For example, members working with subsidiaries of large financial services groups report that directors are frequently aligned with Divisions of the Group and can be appointed to multiple subsidiaries. Typically, a new director joins the Group and is appointed to multiple subsidiaries to replace a director who has left a vacancy across multiple companies. These appointments are frequently made simultaneously. The current proposals would involve receiving the relevant correspondence, processing it and confirming it for each individual company in a very short space of time. This would be a significant regulatory and administrative burden on large corporate groups. Delay is even more likely when an overseas director is appointed to fill a vacancy in a group of companies, which is a relatively frequent occurrence. This heightens our members concerns about the proposed strict liability offence. A company may have taken all possible steps to notify ASIC but is delayed due to circumstances beyond its control. (p. 3)

Similarly, the Law Council of Australia (LCA) expressed concerns with the Director ID regime for foreign companies:

The regime poses significant challenges for foreign companies. A director of a foreign company must obtain a DIN [Director ID] before the branch is registered or updated. In practice, for global institutions this can be difficult within the one-month ASIC notification period. Overseas directors often must verify identity before a local notary and, as recommended, obtain an apostille under the Hague Apostille Convention. Even where a director prioritises Australia, obtaining a DIN within the timeframe can be challenging. Further, notifications of director changes for foreign companies must be lodged with ASIC in wet ink (Form 490), rather than electronically.

This creates a material risk that incoming overseas directors—who may be unaware of an Australian branch or of Australian personal compliance requirements—will inadvertently breach the rules by applying for a DIN or notifying ASIC late. If new legislation were to penalise overseas directors from the date of their overseas appointment, these difficulties would be compounded (pp. 9–10).

The LCA then recommended:

1. The practice for notifying changes to directors of foreign-registered companies be reviewed to reflect practical international constraints.
2. Any offence or penalty provisions continue to recognise that, for incoming directors, the requirement is to have applied for a DIN (rather than to have obtained it), acknowledging potential verification delays abroad.
3. Electronic lodgement be enabled for foreign company director change notifications, or, alternatively, a reasonable grace period be provided where proof of a timely DIN application is furnished (p. 10).

Proposed section 206FA (at item 13) provides ASIC a new power to disqualify a person from managing corporations for up to 3 years if the person fails to apply for a Director ID when directed to by the Registrar. This would occur where ASIC has given the person notice to demonstrate why they should not be disqualified, has given them opportunity to be heard, and if ASIC is satisfied that the disqualification is justified. To assess whether disqualification is justified, ASIC will have regard to the person’s conduct in dealing with the Registrar, if disqualification is in the public interest, and any other matters that ASIC considers appropriate (see proposed paragraph 206FA(c)).

The Registrar’s powers to issue infringement notices under the Director ID regime are repealed in Part 3 of Schedule 1. ASIC will use using its existing infringement notice powers in Part 9.4AB of the Act for Director ID breaches. According to the EM, this is to create a clearer distinction between the Registrar - who is administering the Director ID regime - and ASIC who is intended to be the sole enforcement agency for Director ID (p. 8).

Deregistration powers

Proposed paragraph 601AB(2A), at item 1 of Schedule 2, provides ASIC a new power to deregister a company if it has reason to believe that information provided by a company or with an application for company registration is misleading, false or deceptive or has been misleading by omission. This power will only apply prospectively after commencement, in relation to information provided before, on or after commencement (see proposed section 1744, at item 71). This provision expands ASIC’s existing deregistration powers under section 601AB of the Act, which currently only applies to specific circumstances such as failures relating to fees, returns or notices. An affected company can seek a review of ASIC’s deregistration decision by the Administrative Review Tribunal (see proposed paragraph 1317C(d), at item 2).

The LCA criticised this proposed new power as an ‘overreach’, stating:

Deregistration of a company is an extremely serious measure, and it will have significant implications for the company and others if the company has assets or is carrying on business. “Information given to ASIC” is extremely broad, is not limited to documents and is not even confined on the face of the section to information provided by or about the company. Information can be “misleading” even if the company did not (and could not) know the information was incorrect and there was no intention to mislead. ASIC may “have reason to believe” that information is misleading, but the company may take a different view. There are serious consequences for providing misleading documents to ASIC under section 1308 of the Corporations Act and that is where any misleading conduct should be addressed (p. 4).

The LCA recommend instead:

… if ASIC wishes to have the power to deal with companies that provide it with misleading information by extinguishing them, to amend subsection 461(1) to allow ASIC to apply to the Court for a winding up order based on a contravention of section 1308 by the company or an officer. (p. 4)

The UNSW Tax and Business Advisory Clinic (UNSW TBAC) advised that the new deregistration powers should be used cautiously:

Use the new ground to deregister companies with materially false or misleading information primarily for sham or low-impact entities; prefer formal winding up where there are material debts or signs of misconduct; and ensure records of deregistered companies remain available to insolvency practitioners, AFSA trustees and authorised victim representatives. (p. 2)

Alternative addresses

The amendment to section 205D at item 4 allow directors to provide an alternative address instead of their usual residential address for the purposes of certain registry-related notice and applications. Under existing subsection 205D(2) (which would be repealed by item 4) a person is only entitled to an alternative address if the Australian Electoral Commission has already suppressed their residential address, or if ASIC considers their safety would be at risk if their usual residential address was included in the registry information.

UNSW TBAC, CPA Australia, Customer Owned Banking Association (COBA), GI, and the Economic Abuse Reference Group (EARG) were supportive of this change, as it would protect directors’ privacy and safety from unnecessary exposure to personal risk (critical for victim survivors of financial abuse).

The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) strongly opposed this proposed change, noting the following:

Journalists frequently use directors’ residential addresses to uncover connections between ostensibly unconnected corporate entities. The use of director’s addresses is therefore a crucial means for journalists to identify otherwise hidden relationships between business actors who want to evade scrutiny. (p. 3)

The MEAA added that directors’ safety concerns were already addressed through existing mechanisms (i.e., subsection 205D(2)) (p. 4).

Disclosure and publication of information on registers

Part 9.1 of the Corporations Regulations 2001 (the Regulations) prescribes the information that ASIC can publish on its registers. ASIC, under existing law, cannot publish any other information on the registers besides that prescribed information.

Proposed subsection 1274AB(1), at item 62 of Schedule 2, gives ASIC a new power to publish or disclose information beyond that prescribed information if ASIC reasonably believes that the benefits of doing so outweigh any risks and it is in the public interest. The matters to which ASIC must have regard in deciding if disclosure is in the public interest include protecting consumers or investors from wrongdoing, any harms or adverse impacts for persons, and whether the information is commercially sensitive (see proposed subparagraphs 1274AB(1)(b)(i)-(vii)).

The Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD), LCA and GI were opposed to this provision. The AICD state that ‘a broadly drafted public interest test that is at ASIC’s discretion will lead to a lack of clarity and potentially inconsistent results. (p. 3)’

Restricting access to information on ASIC registers

Proposed section 1274AC, at item 65 of Schedule 2, provides ASIC a new power by legislative instrument to redact information or to refuse public inspection of a lodged document if ASIC believes the benefits of these restrictions outweigh the risks. These powers will apply to all ASIC registers that the public can otherwise search or access information from. In deciding to use this power, ASIC must have regard to matters like those in the proposed disclosure power (see proposed subsection 1274AC(2)). According the EM, this power will be excluded from review by the Administrative Review Tribunal as the exercise of the power must be on a class basis by legislative instrument and is more appropriately subject to Parliamentary scrutiny and disallowance (p. 27).

The EM states that ASIC could use this new provision to ‘put in place tiered access for people seeking to inspect lodged documents under existing subsection 1274(2) … (p. 27)’. While this tiered access is not detailed in the Bill nor the EM, the background paper accompanying the exposure draft legislation outlined the proposed tiers (see Table 1):

Table 1: Types of access to registries information

Search level	Access features
Non-authenticated	Free search without authentication requirements. Such as current search through ABN Lookup or free online company summary extracts.
Authenticated	Access by third party providers as well as access by individuals to more detailed or sensitive information could be through a Digital ID authentication or another form of identity verification. ASIC will also ensure that users of information provided by third parties have appropriate authentication.
Paid search	Authentication from above would be required. In addition, fees apply to access more commercially valuable or sensitive information.
Special use access	Higher tier of access to sensitive information for particular uses. Access would be limited to particular information for defined groups such as regulators, insolvency practitioners, financial institutions, journalists, victim representatives and litigants.

Source: Treasury, Registry stabilisation and uplift design: Background paper to accompany exposure draft legislation (Figure 2, p. 13)

In the background paper, it is noted that:

The provision and publication of Director ID will then enable the removal of some sensitive personal information from the public-facing Companies Register. …

…

After the law takes effect, dates of birth and residential address information will only be accessible to high tier authenticated users with ‘special use access’ and appropriate functions that require access to the information, such as insolvency practitioners and financial institution. (p. 13)

It is not clear from the Bill whether the removal of dates of birth and residential addresses will proceed with commencement. On 2 February 2026, ASIC announced that company extracts purchased through the ASIC website would no longer contain residential addresses of company officeholders. Several stakeholders voiced concerns with increasing barriers to access director’s personal details.

The MEAA strongly opposed the proposed changes to restrict public access to director’s personal details due to its impact on press freedom:

The legislation [along with removing residential addresses] proposes the removal of directors’ dates of birth from company records. This information is frequently relied upon by journalists to accurately identify company directors who may otherwise seek to avoid public scrutiny.

…

Directors’ addresses and dates of birth are also used for other public-interest purposes, including in the fact-checking process.

…

These changes would have significant detriment to the public interest and to the state of corporate transparency and accountability in Australia. (pp. 3-5)

The Australian Restructuring Insolvency and Turnaround Association (ARITA) recommended free access to core company information (including company status, officeholders and key dates) from ASIC registers for transparency and accessibility, similar to the Companies House in the UK (p. 4). The AICD similarly supported adopting the UK’s no-fee approach to access, ‘… provided the information publicly available of directors is limited to the name of the director, the Director ID and the director’s service address (p. 2).’

The Australian Finance Industry Association (AFIA) criticised the changes, stating:

…the removal of directors’ residential address information from ASIC searches has had immediate and significant impacts across lending, AML/CTF [anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing] compliance, fraud prevention, and enforcement (p. 6).

Several stakeholders raised concerns with the ambiguity of the ‘special user access’ tier, and requested their industry to be included in this level. Arca (an industry association focused on credit reporting), the Australian Collectors and Debt Buyers Association, Australian Credit Forum, Australian Institute of Credit Management, Institute of Mercantile Agents, the Association for Investigator Mercantile Professionals and Compliance and AFIA all requested clarification and inclusion in the ‘special use access’ tier so their members are able to effectively provide their services.

The AICD recommended there should be a clear list of who is entitled to have ‘special use access’ and the precise details of what can be accessed. They were opposed to journalists being granted ‘special use access’ to director information, and that journalists should instead submit an application to ASIC demonstrating the basis of need for this information (p. 3).