“A million dead fish can’t be beaten”, proclaimed one nomination for inaugural Australia’s Most Hopeless Regulator (AMHR) Award. Indeed, in a fiercely contested discipline, the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) is a robust contender for the coveted title of the maximum hopeless regulator.
Although it did now not preside over the destruction of the country’s most treasured eco-gadget – as turned into done using the Murray Darling Basin Authority – the Australian Energy Regulator introduced a robust performance nonetheless.
For more than a decade now, the Australian Energy Regulator has finished its exceptional as the maximum hopeless regulator in the united states. On a pure dollar basis, no other regulator has completed extra to strip billions from everyday operating Australians – thru nosebleed strength payments – and plonk the ones billions onto the stability sheets of overseas multinational tax avoiders.
Its associate, the Australian Energy Markets Commission (AEMC), also deserves unique interest because it sets the fuel and electricity marketplace regulations in favor of the big foreign groups.
Before we announce the winner of the Peoples’ Award for Australia’s Most Hopeless Regulator, it’s miles worth considering the quiet non-achievers; those regulators who go about their commercial enterprise being hopeless with little fanfare; people who receive no public popularity for frittering away millions of taxpayer bucks contributing little or nothing.
In this regard, it is difficult no longer to harbor a sneaking private admiration for the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), a frame that’s so elusive that even its individuals must question whether it virtually exists. The FRC is adamant, however, that it’s far from doing suitable work. Having currently despatched out a survey to its auditor individuals do ask them if they notion they have been doing a fantastic job, “ninety-two percent replied … ‘above average’ or ‘superb’”.
That settles it. This form of rigorous process, inviting people to mention nice things approximately their work, has made the FRC what it’s far today, altogether vain.
Then there’s the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). Yes, this truly is an actual corporation; we did not make it up. The OAIC is the privateness and statistics regulator, and there may be no want for the OAIC to reassure itself that it’s far doing a fantastic activity. This regulator is certainly without peer when it comes to finishing inaction, agonizingly gradual reaction instances, and trendy knowledge in ducking and weaving.
The unique point out also has to go to the Australian Skills Quality Authority – the national regulator for Australia’s vocational education and education zone – which has grown to become container-ticking and meaningless office work into an art shape.
The People’s Choice
The humans have spoken. There is a clear winner in the Peoples’ Choice Award for Australia’s Most Hopeless Regulator. When we introduced the AMHR awards in overdue January, the famous top nomination, by ways, became the company regulator, the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC).
Presiding over systemic fraud by using Australia’s most prominent and maximum profitable establishments is no mean feat. It takes a selected group to disregard that much fraud occurring at once under its nose while last, somehow, extant.
Indeed, the Banking Royal Commissioner Kenneth Hayne singled out ASIC for its uselessness on a number of activities final yr.
Undeterred, even in the face of the damning Royal Commission findings, the Commission’s pinnacle brass have been busy giving themselves performance bonuses again last year. Throughout the past decade in reality, as the banks it becomes regulating routinely fleeced their customers, ASIC’s top brass kept on paying themselves higher overall performance bonuses.
