A final set of amendments to the Personal Property Securities Act, which comes into effect in October, was passed in Parliament last week. The amendments include alignment with New Zealand law, consumer protection and access rules.The amendments follow on from an inquiry by the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs last year.PPS will rationalise the current federal, state and territory laws on securities regarding personal property. It will create a single set of rules, and a single national register. The new law will do away with the concepts of fixed and floating charges, and bills of sale, replacing them with security interests instead.A personal property security arises when a secured party takes an interest in personal property as security for a loan or other obligation, or enters into a transaction that involves the supply of secured finance. The PPS Register will allow lenders and businesses to register their security interests. Secured parties and other interested parties can search the PPS Register to find out if a security interest is registered on personal property.Personal property is any form of property other than buildings or fixtures that form part of the land. It can include cars, art, machinery and crops, as well as intangibles such as intellectual property and contract rights.A number of Commonwealth, state and territory personal property registers will close. Security interests listed on those registers will be transferred to the national PPS Register.Registers that will close include the Australian Securities and Investments Commission's Register of Company Names, state registers of encumbered vehicles, state bill of sale registers, and state crop and livestock mortgage registers. The Fisheries Register and the Australian Register of Ships will also close.Vikki Grey, a partner in the taxation, compliance and regulation practice of Gadens Lawyers, said: "At the moment it is difficult to take security over personal property. This streamlines it."Grey said the new law introduced the concept of "perfection", which is a way of describing the priority status of a security interest.An item of personal property may be subject to more than one security interest, each with a different secured party. A security interest that is perfected has priority over an interest that is not perfected.A security interest may be perfected in a number of ways - by registration, possession, control or the force of the act. Grey said that one positive aspect of the new law for lenders is that they can register their interest before advancing funds.The amendments in the final bill include provisions that provide for consistency with New Zealand law, clarify the coverage of CHESS (Securities Exchange traded) securities, and introduce some consumer protection measures in the operation of the PPS Register. The amendments also impose conditions on accessing and using data on the Register, so as to regulate the sale of the data.