An address by Jeffrey Lucy AM FCA, Acting Chairman, ASIC to the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia, Queensland 2004 CA Business Forum, Sanctuary Cove, Queensland, 13 March 2004.
Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today.
I will discuss ASIC's priorities generally and how we set those priorities.
Apart from our ongoing activities in enforcement, consumer protection and policy development, today, I intend to pay particular attention to:
- the work we have done and that which remains to be done in relation to FSR Act implementation
- the numerous tasks surrounding the CLERP 9 reform program
- our various surveillance and monitoring activities in identified areas of regulatory and consumer risk.
The background to all of these activities of ours is one of constant and continuous change. You have seen that the evolution of financial and corporate regulation in Australia over the last decade has been rapid and dramatic. Reform – legislative, common law, self-regulatory, industrydriven – seems to have been constant and will certainly not stop or really even pause in 2004. But that reform has been necessary, simply to try and keep pace (if indeed it has done that), with the growth and evolution of the markets in Australia that rely on effective regulation.