On August 10, 2017, the Treasurer announced that Land Services SA (LSSA) were appointed as the executive Service Provider to manage the provision of the State’s transactional land services and activities for a 40 year concession term.

The Land Services Commercialisation (LSC Project) transaction achieved contractual close on 12 October 2017 and LSSA commences its role as service provider on 13 October 2017.

As part of the LSC transaction, LSSA were granted an Exclusive Right to Negotiate (ERN) with the State for a period of six months in the event that the State decides to commercialise additional registries over the 40 year term of the Land Services Agreement (LSA). To the greatest extent practicable, the agreement that the State and LSSA would enter into (in order to commercialise the management of any other registries) will be substantially the same terms as the LSA.

The State and the LSSA will not be bound to enter any agreement, however, both parties will be obliged to negotiate in good faith and if no agreement can be reached at the end of the six month negotiation period, the State is free to go to the market to commercialise other registries.

The ERN also binds the State to use its reasonable endeavours to undertake necessary preparatory work to make a decision whether or not to commence the formal process to commercialise the management of the Motor Vehicle Registry (MVR), managed by the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure (DPTI) and Service SA, prior to 13 October 2020.

In order to assist the State decide whether to commercialise the MVR, the Commercial and Economics Branch (CEB), within the Department of Treasury and Finance (DTF) requires the production of a Scoping Study providing the State with a number of options on the potential commercialisation options.