In Problems of Greater Britain, the English politician Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke concluded that high wages, cheap food and the time available for sporting and cultural activities made Australia a workers’ paradise.
If Dilke’s observation in 1890 ever had any truth to it, it was a paradise soon lost. The average weekly wage did not recover from its fall in the 1891 depression until 20 years later. For the less skilled in the labour force, the 20% wage loss in the depression wasn’t clawed back until 1921.
And “workers’ paradise” is unlikely to be a description with which the working poor, who today make up a third of those living below the poverty line, readily identify.
So it is of some comfort to know that paradise has returned — for some at least.
Who these lucky individuals are was spelled out by the chairperson of the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC), Greg Medcraft, at a business journalism awards lunch in Sydney on October 21.
Medcraft is none too happy with the federal finance minister Mathias Cormann, who has reversed consumer protection regulations against dodgy financial planners at the behest of the big banks.
Perhaps it was this frustration that led Medcraft to issue his own warning to the public to be “extremely careful” in their dealings with financial planners. To drive the point home he revealed that ASIC’s policing of them amounts to a check of these 30,000 planners just once in every 30 years on average.
Warming to the topic, he told his fellow diners that the review conducted by ASIC of international penalties for corporate crime showed Australia to be near the back of the pack. Australian penalties for white-collar crime are so light that it is actually financially worthwhile to commit corporate crime.
Medcraft said Australia is now a “paradise for white-collar criminals” where financial penalties haven’t been indexed to inflation for 20 years.
Perhaps Medcraft could consider concentrating some serious resources into an ASIC investigation so as to make an example of some corporate miscreant that might act as a deterrent to others.
There is, after all, a precedent of sorts. Last year, environmental activist Jonathan Moylan issued a fake press release in the name of ANZ bank, which said it had withdrawn its financial involvement for Whitehaven Coal’s mine at Maules Creek.
Mainstream journalists who should have known better, and at least checked the press release with ANZ, reported it as fact. This resulted in $314 million being temporarily erased from Whitehaven Coal’s market value.
For his prank, Moylan was sentenced to one year and eight months in jail by the NSW Supreme Court. Although he was immediately released on a two-year good behaviour bond, the prospect of serving 20 months in jail should he carry out another, similar prank is with him as a deterrent for two years.
Moylan is no white-collar criminal fleecing companies for self-gain. So why was he even prosecuted in the first place?
During the lunch at the swish Sydney restaurant Bentley — where the eight course tasting menu with wine comes at a mere $230 — Medcraft provided an explanation for Moylan’s prosecution: “We went after him because we wanted to make an example.”
With this sort of example of ASIC’s priorities, white-collar criminals will be cleaning up for some time yet in the paradise that has been so thoughtfully constructed for them.
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