Minter Ellison's popular report on the fundamentals of doing business in Australia.
A key part of our practice involves working with clients on their major one-off leases and on volume leasing work Australia-wide. Minter Ellison's leasing team has significant experience in leasing and redevelopment work for Australia's leading property owners and managers. We are unique among large full-service firms for delivering these services cost effectively. While other large firms abandoned this work some time ago, Minter Ellison renewed its practices and procedures and developed a team and system that enables us to provide the services cost effectively. We advise on commercial, industrial, and retail leases; headquarters relocation; variations to, surrender or assignments of leases; subleases; green leasing; licence agreements (e.g. car park, storage, and telecommunications); right of entry waivers; facilities management; and lease-related dispute resolution. Our leasing team is experienced in providing leasing services to landlords, tenants, agents, private enterprise and government, developers and others. Members of our team author the Retail Legislation Compendium, now in its 4th edition, which summarises Australia's tenancy laws across all states and territories.
On 20 December 2011, the Minister for Innovation, Services and Small Business determined that premises of which the tenant is a body corporate whose securities are listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange Limited or a subsidiary of such a body corporate, are excluded from the operation of the Retail Leases Act 2003 (Vic). The Determination rectifies a recent anomaly that arose when New Zealand withdrew from the World Federation of Exchanges in March 2010.
A recent judgment of the New South Wales Supreme Court dealt with the question of whether a party to a dispute over a NSW retail premises lease is prevented from commencing court proceedings before the parties have attempted mediation of the dispute. In this case the Supreme Court decided that a failure to submit the dispute to mediation before the commencement of proceedings did not deprive the court of the jurisdiction to satisfy itself that mediation is unlikely to resolve the dispute, and if so satisfied, proceed to determine the dispute.