Australia

Contact Managing Partner Patricia Leers directly with your queries about Australian law.

Why trade with or invest in Australia?

Australia is a highly urbanised, yet still sparsely populated, continental country located in the Oceania region. Its current population is around 24 million people, but this is expected to nearly double by the year 2050. Its closest neighbour is New Zealand, and the two countries share a common cultural, political and legal heritage. The capital is Canberra, but Sydney and Melbourne are the two largest metropolitan areas. Many Australian cities are ranked highly on international quality of living surveys.

The Australian economy is the twelfth largest in the world. With its abundance of minerals and natural resources, Australia has benefited from increased commodity prices in the 21st century. The Australian economy was notable for not falling into recession following the global financial crisis. A highly liberalised trade economy, Australia has secured a number of major free trade agreements with partners including the United States, China, South Korea, New Zealand and Chile. The country has stable legal, political and banking systems.

Unique elements of Australian law and the Australian legal system

Australia’s government is a federal parliamentary democracy. It has six states and two mainland territories. Each state and mainland territory has its own parliament, and most legislation is made at the state or territory level. Although Commonwealth (federal) law is supreme, the Federal parliament can only make laws about limited subjects, including finance, tax and immigration. The Australian legal system is an English-style common law system, with many similarities to countries such as New Zealand and Canada. States and territories have their own court systems, and the Federal court system rules on federal issues. The High Court of Australia is the country’s supreme court, ruling on both state and federal legal questions. The Australian and New Zealand governments share an ongoing commitment to create a seamless common Australasian business market and harmonise regulations. This means that the two countries have identical (or at least very similar) regulations in many areas including competition law, securities law and consumer rights law.

Australia encourages foreign investment, especially from Asia Pacific investors. The relevant regulators for foreign investment are the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Foreign Investment Review Board. The country operates a large-scale skilled migrant immigration scheme to support its strongly performing economy. It has a somewhat complex taxation system, featuring federal and state level taxes, but has agreed double taxation agreements with many other jurisdictions. In the World Bank’s 2017 Doing Business Report, Australia ranked highly in areas such as construction permits, enforcing contracts and accessing credit.

Whom we work for

A-Law experienced lawyers welcome all clients in need of legal advice including legal defense with regard to the investment and trade projects in or from Australia. Guiding foreign investors into the Australian corporate and bank regulations, license requests and public procurement policies may constitute a challenge on its own.

A-Law has built up this expertise as well as provided multiple legal services to Australian companies providing engineering, IT, construction, logistics services in other EU and non EU countries involving i.a. tax, labor, migration and IP issues.  A-Law Australia desk has been providing legal support to clients in different areas, such as real estate issues, corporate and civil (family) law, traffic law, migration law, liability law and debts recovery (bankruptcy, administrative fines).

An in-depth approach of the different legal aspects of cross border cooperation and trade, commercial agency, distribution and franchising of a wide variety of products exported from or imported into Australia have been assessed through A-Law dedicated team.