A pair of "Great Southern" borrowers that owed A$1.4 million to Bendigo and Adelaide Bank will linger in bankruptcy years longer than the conventional three years, following a late intervention by the bank. An appeal to the full court of the Federal Court of Australia has upheld an earlier decision, an outcome labelled as "the result of an uncritical assimilation in the Bankruptcy Act of personal insolvency agreements with compositions."Michel and Julie Mouglalis, property developers, owed the bank over their entanglement in Great Southern, along with many millions to other creditors. In May 2012, the couple were declared bankrupt by orders of the then Federal Magistrates Court of Australia.A trustee in bankruptcy was appointed to their individual estates and to their joint estate. The couple lodged their respective statements of affairs on 12 December 2012. At meetings held on 3 December 2013, the creditors of the couple accepted, by special resolution, a proposal by the appellants for compositions satisfying their debts in respect of each of three estates. On 19 February 2015, the bank applied for an order terminating or setting aside the compositions and for sequestration orders. On 20 May 2016, the primary judge of Federal Court made the orders that are the subject of the appeal.Justice Logan of the full court, wrote the case entailed "a significant issue with respect to insolvency law and practice in relation to sequels to the setting aside of compositions.    The three judges agreed that "the Bankruptcy Act does not give the court the power to change or vary the date of discharge from bankruptcy determined in the manner laid down in the Act.""It may very well be that the predicament presented in the circumstances of the present case is the result of an uncritical assimilation in the Bankruptcy Act of personal insolvency agreements with compositions," wrote Justice Logan."As the present case illustrates, especially where a composition is promoted well into the usual period of bankruptcy, it by no means follows that there will be any act of bankruptcy in the six months prior to the filing of an application for the setting aside of that composition and consequential sequestration. Equally, by the time when an order setting aside a composition comes to be made what would otherwise have been the period until discharge of the original bankruptcy may well, as here, have expired."The result of the application of the Bankruptcy Act in this case, Justice Logan wrote, "is that, subject to any objection by their trustee, Mr and Mrs Mouglalis will be discharged from bankruptcy three years after they file [for a second time] their respective individual and joint statements of affairs. "That result might seem harsh, given that it is much longer than that for which even Bendigo Bank contended. It is, however, the constitutional duty of the judiciary to give effect to the terms of an Act, properly construed, and to leave to parliamentary value judgment the amelioration by legislative amendment of any unintended or harsh consequence of the application