A 20-month inquiry into the company watchdog was tabled yesterday. And it wasn’t fairly.
In one line; ASIC’s ambit is simply too extensive, its resourcing too low and its tradition so unhealthy that white collar crime has been allowed to go unchecked in Australia, for too lengthy.
To repair this, the report recommends splitting ASIC up, into one physique centered on company crime, and one other to regulate monetary conduct.
Senate Economics Committee chair Andrew Bragg was fairly blunt about ASIC’s efficiency.
“ASIC has one job, and that job is to enforce the law and ASIC has not been focused on law enforcement. Instead, it’s been focused on its own internal problems. And that has meant that there’s been a white flag waved on white collar crime, which has meant that people feel they have a licence to break the law in Australia.”
He needs to Australia to have a company cop with enamel:
“I think that unless you are showing that you are prepared to put heads on the spike, then you’re not going to get any change in culture. And I think we need to have feared agencies so that people think twice when they want to do the wrong thing.”
The report additionally recommends amending Australia’s present whistleblower laws to incentivise whistleblowers to come ahead with data that may “significantly benefit the public”, and compensate those that do converse out, or these “who are unable to make a disclosure in the public benefit without experiencing significant personal detriment, such as loss of career prospects”.
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