Speech by Jeffrey Lucy, Chairman of ASIC, to Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, 4 August 2004.
Thank-you for inviting me here today.
It is my pleasure to address the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce.
Your organisation does a lot to facilitate trade and business between Australia and Israel as well as raising awareness of commercial and regulatory issues in each country, including some that are close to our hearts at ASIC. Another virtue of the AICC is its reputation for providing a forum for speakers to communicate with the Australian business community.
This afternoon, I am very pleased to be able to share with you some of the significant issues I see facing ASIC at the moment, and inevitably, also Australian business.
I want to use this platform today to do two things:
- Firstly, I want to explore with you the job of corporate regulator. That is, 'what is it that we are trying to achieve at ASIC?' and
- Secondly, I want to explain how we are going to go about doing this task. In particular, I'll focus on three of our key challenges in the coming years:
- bedding down the financial services reforms
- building on our strong enforcement activities
- improving consumer protection.
I hope that in sharing this information with you as representatives of the business community, we can work together to achieve a stronger and more confident market that will continue to attract capital flows, and in which business and investors will prosper.