What it does
The Corporations (Western Australia) Act 1990 is an application statute that adopts defined provisions of Commonwealth legislation as laws of Western Australia, thereby giving effect to a national corporations regulatory scheme. Section 1(2) expressly states its purposes as applying provisions of the Corporations Act 1989 (Cth) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 1989 (Cth), together with their regulations, as laws of Western Australia, and applying other Commonwealth laws for the administration and enforcement of the law relating to corporations, the securities industry, the futures industry and related matters.
At its core, the Act achieves this through declarative application provisions. Section 7 applies the Corporations Law set out in section 82 of the Corporations Act 1989 (Cth) (as in force immediately before the repeal of that section) as a law of Western Australia, which may then be referred to as the Corporations Law of Western Australia. Section 8 does likewise for the regulations made under section 22 of the Corporations Act 1989 (Cth). Parallel provisions appear in Part 11 for the ASIC Law: s.58 applies the ASIC Act (excluding specified Parts and sections listed in the table to that subsection) as the ASIC Law of Western Australia, while s.59 applies the associated regulations.
The Act then establishes mechanisms to ensure the adopted laws operate as a single national body of law. Part 3 facilitates simplified citation (s.11 allows reference simply to "the Corporations Law") and provides rules of construction so that a reference in any Western Australian instrument to the Corporations Law is taken to include the Law of every other jurisdiction (s.13(2)), unless a contrary intention appears. Equivalent rules apply to the ASIC Law under ss.63 and 65. This drafting technique implements the policy stated in s.13(1): to make the Corporations Law of Western Australia operate, so far as possible, as if it, together with the Corporations Law of each other jurisdiction, constituted a single national Corporations Law applying of its own force throughout Australia.