Ms O’CONNOR – An update, perhaps, on the government’s original plan to divest itself of the Land Titles Office and whether you can confirm as minister, that’s no longer part of the government’s plan?
Mr DUIGAN – No longer part of the government’s plan.
Ms O’CONNOR – That is confirmation. On what basis did you decide to walk away from it, apart from the application of common sense?
Mr DUIGAN – The government of recent times has canvassed the divestiture of public government businesses and has decided not to proceed down that track.
Ms O’CONNOR – Was it because it was politically sensitive and unpopular. Or was there also identified a risk potentially, to holders of titles?
Mr DUIGAN – I would certainly make the point that lands titles offices in other jurisdictions are held privately. That’s not the case here in Tasmania. They work irrespective of the ownership structure of them. You have to be careful with the information that is held. It is very valuable information. As has been touched on already, people would seek to get to that information, whether it’s publicly held or privately held doesn’t necessarily make it more or less secure. We have had our conversation around divesting public assets of recent times, and happily settled where we are.
Ms O’CONNOR – Can I ask, given that titles now are stored electronically, what kind of security provisions are in place to protect that asset and therefore make sure your kind of protecting the rights of property owners in that the titles are safe?
Mr DUIGAN – Yes, it’s a good question and one that occurs to lots of people. It probably to a large extent is blind to the fact that paper titles aren’t necessarily all that safe either.
Ms O’CONNOR – They can catch fire, for example.
Mr DUIGAN – It can be burned, can be lost, can be whatever else, and technology has evolved, but as I say, they’re valuable items and we need to be looking at how we do that. As we move into our electronic conveyancing age, Stuart, you’re probably best placed to provide detail around the mechanisms that protect those.
Mr FLETCHER – We’ve always held titles electronically, and we currently – at the moment we still have paper certificates of title within the conveyancing system. The Recorder of Titles has indicated to industry that we will be removing paper certificates of title on 1 September 2026, and there are a number of controls that have been put in place. Obviously, at the moment, when you lodge something with the titles office, like a transfer, it comes alongside the paper certificate of title.
The Recorder of Titles has put in a number of controls for industry around what’s expected of industry to ensure that the party that’s dealing with that particular property has a right to deal with that property; so obviously verifying their identity, verifying their right to deal, so that’s basically establishing a link between ‘John Smith’ and the ‘John Smith’ that we have on the titles register, so evidence that would link that person to that address, and then retention of evidence in relation to verifying that right to deal. That is in place at the moment with industry and has been in place since last year.
In terms of the broader cybersecurity, obviously the Land Titles Register is a significant piece of infrastructure, basically holding a record of everybody’s land holdings in the state. We have significant multiple instances of that land titles database in different sites across Hobart, two separate sites, and also regular backups of that information as well.
The agency also has a significant emphasis on cybersecurity, so we’ve employed a number of strategies to protect our systems and data to align with the Tasmanian government’s Protective Security Policy Framework. We’ve invested in a protective services team with additional cybersecurity staff to increase the team to three dedicated staff. We’ve strengthened our IT use policy to clearly preclude the use of work emails and personal subscriptions to limit our exposure to third‑party systems breaches, so that’s obviously someone putting their work email into a ticketing system or something like that, and using the same passwords, and those systems being breached.
We’ve got significant network firewalls, intrusion protection prevention systems, email filtering, antivirus and anti‑malware software, multi‑factor authentication on all of our systems, regular software updating and patching, and regular data and systems backup. We’ve also had a fairly large focus on staff cybersecurity training and awareness, particularly phishing attacks, with simulated phishing attacks for staff within the agency where they receive an email that looks very real.
CHAIR – Like we all do.
Mr FLETCHER – And we also work closely with the Department of Premier and Cabinet and Digital Strategy and Services team on whole‑of‑government cybersecurity acts – services.
The other side to this is external systems, so electronic conveyancing is not just our system, it’s also, at the moment, PEXA which is an ASX‑listed company who manage the electronic conveyancing workspaces. That’s where the electronic conveyancing transactions occur and the actual dealings are lodged with the relevant land titles offices across Australia, through that system. Money transactions occur in that space and then the lodgement gets pushed into our system via web services.
Ms O’CONNOR – Thank you.
Mr FLETCHER – We’ve done – not penetration testing, but we’ve certainly had assessments done on those third parties as well.
CHAIR – Anything else on 1.1? If not, we will move to 1.2, which is valuation services.
