Commercial Arbitration Act 2012 (WA)

Western Australia

Western Australia

Commercial Arbitration Act 2012

An Act relating to the conduct of commercial arbitrations, to repeal the Commercial Arbitration Act 1985 and for other purposes.

The Parliament of Western Australia enacts as follows:

This is the Commercial Arbitration Act 2012.

This Act comes into operation as follows —

• (a)

  sections 1A and 1B — on the day on which this Act receives the Royal Assent;

• (b)

  the rest of the Act — on a day fixed by proclamation, and different days may be fixed for different provisions.

• (1)

  The paramount object of this Act is to facilitate the fair and final resolution of commercial disputes by impartial arbitral tribunals without unnecessary delay or expense.

• (2)

  This Act aims to achieve its paramount object by —

  • (a)

    enabling parties to agree about how their commercial disputes are to be resolved (subject to subsection (3) and such safeguards as are necessary in the public interest); and

  • (b)

    providing arbitration procedures that enable commercial disputes to be resolved in a cost effective manner, informally and quickly.

• (3)

  This Act must be interpreted, and the functions of an arbitral tribunal must be exercised, so that (as far as practicable) the paramount object of this Act is achieved.

• (4)

  Subsection (3) does not affect the application of the Interpretation Act 1984 section 18 for the purposes of interpreting this Act.

• (1)

  Sections of this Act that contain a reference to the “Model Law” in the heading are substantially the same as the provisions of the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration (as adopted by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law on 21 June 1985 with amendments as adopted by that Commission in 2006) so as to be as uniform as possible with the UNCITRAL Model Law.

• (2)

  Some changes have been made to those provisions of the Act based on the UNCITRAL Model Law to amend or supplement the provisions in their application to domestic arbitrations in Western Australia or to accommodate modern drafting styles and conventions (for example, provisions are drafted in gender neutral terms and archaisms are replaced with modern alternatives).

• (3)

  Notes draw attention to substantive changes.

• (4)

  The original numbering of the “articles” of the UNCITRAL Model Law has been retained but converted to references to “sections” and articles containing more than one sentence have been re‑formatted into subsections. There are a number of additional provisions to those based on the UNCITRAL Model Law.

• (5)

  This section does not affect the interpretation or application of this Act.

This Act binds the State and, so far as the legislative power of the State permits, the Crown in all its other capacities.

Note for this section:

There is no equivalent to this section…