Note: Product updating cycles vary based on title. Some products update 15 times per year others only 2 – 3 times. Legislation updates when necessary, this can be many times per month.

Since the release of the Service, less than three months ago there have been several hundred sentencing judgments handed down by the High Court and appeal courts throughout Australia. More than 50 of these decisions are significant in that they either change existing sentencing law and practice or qualify it or elaborate on previously unclear areas. All of these 50-plus judgments are discussed in the first update.

Seminal cases include:

• Green v The Queen; Quinn v The Queen [2011] HCA 49 where the High Court took a broad view of the parity doctrine;
• Muldrock v The Queen [2011] HCA 39 in which the High Court overturned the approach to setting parole period periods for offences which have standard non-parole terms. This approach had been established in the decision of R v Way [2004] NSWCCA 131 and hence stood unchallenged for seven years;
• R v Marien [2011] SASCFC 116 the Court discussed tariffs for child sex offences;
• R v Matauaina [2011] QCA 344 where the Queensland Court of Appeal undertook a detailed assessment of the tariff for thefts from an employer;
• H A T v The Queen [2011] VSCA, in which the Victorian Court of Appeal discusses the relevance of confiscation orders, and in particular automatic forfeiture, to sentencing. The Court in this case also examines the circumstances in which cultural background can be a mitigating consideration;
• Castres v The Queen; Kent v The Queen [2011] VSCA 377, in which the aggravating nature of the prison context to assaults is examined at length.

Click here for more information on Australian Sentencing.

This enhancement is to reflect  the growing need of our subscribers to access information on Queensland  legislation pertaining to mental health, victims of crime, drugs and children.

Over the next year, Summary Offences Queensland author  Nick Tucker will be adding annotations to the legislation included in the following new tab cards:

1. Mental Health

Mental Health Act 2000 Ch3

 2. Victims of Crime

Victims of Crime Assistance Act 2009

3. Drugs Court

Drug Court Act 2000

Drugs Misuse Act & Regulations 7987

 4. Children

Childrens Court Act 7992

Childrens Court Rules 7997

Child Protection Act 7999 (extract)

Young Offenders (Interstate Transfer) Act 7987

Youth Justice Act 7992

The next 12 months will be a very exciting time for Summary Offences Queensland  and we look forward  to progressively enhancing the service during this time.

 We seek to help practitioners manage the large volume of tax developments that occur by providing clear well-structured contents lists for Weekly Tax Bulletin and by giving each article a clear and meaningful heading. Practitioners can then decide what reports they wish to read. It is also a permanent reference source that can be referred back to whenever necessary.

In 2011, Weekly Tax Bulletin published 53 issues with 2081 updates and 85 Practitioner articles. Practitioners are entitled to wince at the volume of change, but unfortunately, ignorance of the tax law is no excuse. Practitioners might not like the volume of change they are faced with, but they can be sure that “if it moves in tax, it’s covered in Weekly Tax Bulletin”.

The Weekly Tax Bulletin also features a special year-end tax planning issue, a special Federal Budget issue (and budget follow up reports) and regular international tax updates.  The Bulletin also provides a recent articles research tool – it references tax articles in a wide variety of journals which saves time for busy practitioners.

The Weekly Tax Bulletin actively leverages the global nature of Thomson Reuters to benefit our customers. Tax is now more transnational and cross-border than ever before and Thomson Reuters is ideally placed to cover that. Weekly Tax Bulletin regularly uses our links with the worldwide Reuters network and with Thomson Reuters in places like New York, New Zealand and Europe to bring our subscribers major tax reports of interest,  for example, concerning tax havens, offshore tax evasion, transfer pricing, withholding tax on offshore assets, NZ tax reforms of relevance in Australia, bank secrecy (for example, the UBS saga in the US), US action on reportable tax positions (the ATO is now adopting this approach here), carbon tax experience from Europe.

There is simply more coverage, more detail, and more value with Weekly Tax Bulletin.

• 157 Application for change of name of a company under external administration
• 202 Application for registration of a body corporate as an Australian company
• 401 Application for registration as a registrable Australian body
• 402 Application for registration as a foreign company
• 492 Request for correction
• 504 Notification that a person has been appointed controller/ entered into possession etc.
• 505 Notification of appointment or cessation of an external administrator
• 507 Report as to affairs
• 960 Application for copy of certificate
• 961 Application for copies of documents (DocImage search)
• 964 Application for information about specific corporations (computer database search)
• RA01 Notification to register, change details of, or cease as an agent
• RA04 Direct debit request

These forms have been removed:

• 309 Notification of details of a charge
• 310 Notification of further issues of debentures in a series
• 311A Notification of assignment of a charge
• 311B Notification of change of details of a charge
• 312 Notification of discharge or release of property from a charge
• 327 Application for extension of time – stamp duty deficiency
• 350 Certification of Compliance with stamp duties law
• CH01 Charges forms (Cover sheet for forms 115 & 348)

ASIC Forms will automatically check for updates whenever it is started.  There is also a menu option to manually check for updates if you wish. 

After an update is released online, you will receive a notification when you next open the application saying that the forms have been updated. You will then be given an option to download them and restart the application to ensure all changes take effect.

If you already have data in any of the forms that are changing, you won’t lose this data – it will be transferred over to the new forms.

1.  To access your alerts, click on “My Alerts” at the top of the Westlaw AU homepage.

2. Choose your alert from the list and then click on “Suspend.”

3.  Put in the range of dates you’ll be away on leave. 

4.  Click on Save at the bottom of the screen. 

5.  Once the end date has passed, you’ll again start receiving your alerts!

 To download the act, simply search the UK Statutes (UK-ST) database.

Search for the Equality Act 2010 (UK)

1. Search for a database: UK-ST

2. Search: TI(“equality act 2010”)
Note: it is recommended that you use the Title field to search for the Act by title.  Field descriptions can be found in the information scope.
Remember: use Terms & Connectors!

3. Results

Results are listed in section order.   The main screen contains a list of table of provisions and the PDF of the entire Act.

Some of the changes we have made include:

Saving editable Forms into your own document management system

Many of you want to be able to save not only the final locked pdf into your own document management system, but also an editable version of your Form. You can now do this.

If you would like to manage multiple versions of the same Form from within your own document management system (rather than utilising the “Profiles” function within the ASIC Forms application itself), you can do so as follows.

After entering data into your Form, select the menu item File and then Save As. You can save your Form data to a location of your choosing within your own document management system.

As an example, you may wish to create a network folder for all users within your organisation on a shared network drive.  You can name the folders and files by whatever naming convention you choose.

To access your saved versions of the Forms, you can:

(1)      Double click on the saved Form Data File in your shared network drive. This will open the Form in your ASIC Forms program (which must be installed) where you can edit it and create a new PDF. You may then wish to save the updated Form Data File back into your document management system and either overwrite the previously saved version or save it as a new version.

OR

(2)    Open ASIC Forms and then go to File and Open form from File. Then browse to the location of your saved Form Data File and select Open.

Resizing of home page

In the initial version of ASIC Forms, the home page was a fixed size. We have updated this screen and it is now resizeable to suit your screen size and your preferences.

Clearing your Form

You can now clear each page of your Form. If you don’t want to set up a new profile, but instead want to reuse a Form you’ve already completed, but with different details, you can now simply click on the button at the top of each page saying “Clear this page” and all the data will be deleted (and yes, it does ask you to confirm before deleting to ensure you don’t accidently delete the wrong page!).

Calendar

Once you’ve opened the Calendar, previously you had to select a date to close it. This was a small bug and has now been remedied. You can now click anywhere on your page and the calendar will close.

We are committed to improving our products and will continue to upgrade and release new enhancements. If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to leave a comment below. And don’t forget, we are ASIC’s official publisher and we publish a range of other ASIC works to give you full coverage of all your compliance responsibilities.

Inline Status Flags allow FirstPoint subscribers to quickly and easily discern the status of other cases cited by the case they are reviewing.

This new feature  represents a significant saving in time and effort and is just one of the many ways Westlaw AU helps users streamline their research.

Click here to see some of the other features and benefits of Westlaw AU.

The changes will take effect on the 13th of January. They will be applied seamlessly and users will not need to make any changes to their Alert24 profile.

The changes are:

1. Article links added to Westlaw AU and Legal Online
• The article title links will be replaced by two platform specific links. This change will allow users to access the Alert24 article via Legal Online or Westlaw AU depending on their preference.
2. Case links added for Alert24 Cases articles
• The addition of document links to case articles will allow user to go directly to the FirstPoint record on Legal Online or via Westlaw AU.

Note: Westlaw AU link authentication require users to have been set up with access to Westlaw AU.

All Legal Online users will be migrated to Westlaw AU over the next 6 months as part of the migration to Westlaw AU. If your organisation has not yet begun the migration you can request this be brought forward at any time.

If you would like your migration brought forward or if you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact our Customer Care Team on 1300 133 041 or by emailing  LTA.Customer.Helpdesk@thomsonreuters.com