Alan Jones QC

The disclosures about related party transactions at Mineral Resources raise fundamental questions about whether the governance frameworks designed to protect minority shareholders are functioning as intended.

The powers of the eSafety Commissioner to order the removal of online content have expanded significantly in recent years. The accountability mechanisms that apply to those powers have not kept pace. This asymmetry is a problem for free expression.

As Australian superannuation funds increase their allocations to private credit, the governance frameworks that apply to those investments deserve scrutiny. The disclosure standards are inadequate and the conflicts of interest are real.

The enthusiasm for artificial intelligence stocks has driven valuations to levels that require extraordinary assumptions about future earnings to justify. Enthusiasm is not a valuation methodology.

The controversy surrounding WiseTech Global and its founder demonstrates that cultural issues at the top of an organisation are not separable from governance questions. Boards that treat them as distinct are making a category error.

The reintroduction of misinformation legislation by the Albanese government represents a second attempt to address a genuine problem with tools that are poorly calibrated. The free speech concerns are real and deserve engagement rather than dismissal.

For the third consecutive year, markets have priced in rate cuts that did not materialise on the expected schedule. The pattern suggests a systematic bias toward optimism that investors should consciously correct for.

The Compensation Scheme of Last Resort represents a significant shift in the allocation of risk in Australian financial services. Whether it is adequately funded, and whether its scope is appropriate, are questions that deserve ongoing examination.

The revision of the ASX Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations is the most significant update to the governance framework in several years. The implications for listed company boards are practical and immediate.

Australian democracy is not in crisis. But it is under strain — from declining institutional trust, from the breakdown of norms of political honesty, and from a media environment that rewards heat over light. These are problems worth naming.

Australia's productivity growth has been anaemic for more than a decade. The policy responses on offer from both major parties are inadequate to the scale of the problem. This is worth saying plainly.

The distributional consequences of a decade of low interest rates — and the subsequent rapid normalisation — have been profoundly unequal. Those who owned assets benefited. Those who did not face a housing market that has moved beyond their reach.

The tolerance for political dishonesty in Australian public life has expanded to a point that would have been considered remarkable a generation ago. The consequences for democratic accountability are not theoretical — they are playing out in real time.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank exposed a risk that was hiding in plain sight: the duration mismatch between long-dated bond assets and short-dated deposit liabilities in a rapidly rising rate environment.

The findings of the Bell Inquiry into The Star Entertainment Group document a governance failure that was, in retrospect, predictable. The board's oversight of management conduct was inadequate. The regulatory response was slow.

The rapid collapse of Silicon Valley Bank demonstrated the speed with which a bank run can develop in the age of social media and digital banking. Australian regulators and bank boards should be drawing the right lessons from this episode.

The Reserve Bank of Australia's rate hiking cycle is among the most aggressive in its history. The fact that inflation remains above target suggests either that the transmission mechanism is slower than expected, or that the underlying drivers are more persistent.

The No vote in the Voice referendum was emphatic. The attempt by some commentators to characterise it as a vote for racism rather than a vote against a specific constitutional proposal is an evasion that does not serve honest public discourse.

Activist investors have moved from the fringes of Australian corporate life to the mainstream. The ability of well-resourced shareholders to force strategic change — or board change — is now a feature of the governance landscape that all directors must take seriously.

Australian consumers lost more than $3 billion to scams in 2022. The question of whether banks that facilitate scam payments — knowingly or otherwise — should bear greater liability for those losses is now before regulators and courts.

The rapid growth of private credit markets has occurred largely outside the regulatory perimeter that governs bank lending. The risks are real, the disclosure is limited, and the exposure of Australian superannuation funds is growing.

Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter and his stated commitment to free speech has produced a platform that is simultaneously more permissive and more chaotic than its predecessor. Whether this represents progress depends on what problem you think social media regulation is supposed to solve.

The resignation of Alan Joyce from Qantas amid mounting regulatory and reputational pressure was necessary but insufficient. The question of board-level accountability for the conduct that occurred on its watch remains inadequately answered.

The legislated objective of superannuation — to preserve savings to deliver income in retirement — sounds straightforward. Its implications for investment strategy, fee structures, and the use of super for housing are anything but.

The consensus at the start of 2023 was that rate cuts were imminent. The consensus was wrong. The lesson — as it always is — is that economic forecasting is harder than economists will admit.

The era of emergency interest rates is ending. The transition back to normalcy will be managed — or mismanaged — in ways that will determine the financial wellbeing of millions of Australian households.

The rapid rise in interest rates will, with a lag, translate into significant mortgage stress for Australian households that borrowed at the peak of the property market on the assumption that rates would remain low indefinitely.

The convoy of protesters who descended on Canberra to protest COVID-19 mandates were, in the main, ordinary Australians with legitimate grievances about the exercise of state power. The media's characterisation of them was, in many cases, unrecognisable.

The demands placed on boards by COVID-19 — managing unprecedented operational disruption, communicating with dispersed workforces, navigating government support schemes — have exposed significant gaps in the skills and experience of some Australian boards.

Central banks spent most of 2021 insisting inflation was transitory. They were wrong. The cost of that error is now being paid by households in higher prices, higher rates, and declining real wages.

Australia has an opportunity to establish itself as a well-regulated jurisdiction for digital assets. The risk is that the pursuit of that opportunity leads to a regulatory race to the bottom of the kind that has characterised previous financial innovation cycles.

Trust in institutions — government, media, medicine, law — has declined sharply across the developed world. The causes are multiple and the consequences are serious. Rebuilding it requires honesty about why it was lost.

Not every bear market is equal. Some represent cyclical corrections in otherwise healthy economies. Others reveal structural problems that were obscured by the bull market preceding them. This one has elements of both.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has made clear that environmental claims made by fund managers and listed companies will be scrutinised for accuracy. The legal exposure for those who overstate their credentials is real.

The Federal Court's findings against Dixon Advisory document a pattern of conflicted financial advice that caused significant harm to thousands of clients. The implications for the financial advice industry are practical and immediate.

The near-collapse of the UK gilt market following the Truss government's mini-budget was not a uniquely British phenomenon. It was a demonstration of what happens when fiscal credibility is squandered — a lesson with universal application.

The proposal for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament is a significant constitutional change that deserves rigorous public debate. The tendency of its proponents to characterise substantive questions as bad faith opposition is not helpful.

The trend toward holding individual directors personally liable for governance failures — rather than simply imposing penalties on corporations — is accelerating. The implications for director behaviour and board culture are significant.

The Federal Court's findings in ASIC v RI Advice establish that cybersecurity risk is not merely a technology problem — it is a legal obligation that directors and responsible managers must manage with adequate rigour.

The GameStop episode revealed something important about modern markets: the tools of coordination that were previously available only to institutional investors are now available to anyone with a smartphone.

Two years after Kenneth Hayne delivered his final report, it is worth assessing what has genuinely changed in Australian financial services and what has not. The answer is more complicated than the industry's public communications suggest.

The dismissal of 'cancel culture' as a right-wing talking point is itself a form of intellectual dishonesty. The phenomenon is real, its consequences for public discourse are significant, and it deserves honest analysis rather than tribal defensiveness.

The Federal Reserve's insistence that rising inflation is transitory is a prediction, not a fact. The credibility cost of being wrong about it will be significant — and will be borne, as usual, by those least able to absorb it.

The coordinated short squeeze of GameStop by retail investors on Reddit demonstrated that the tools of market influence are no longer the exclusive province of institutional investors. Australian boards need to understand this new landscape.

The rapid growth of private credit markets in Australia has occurred with limited regulatory oversight and limited public disclosure. The risks embedded in these markets are real, and the mechanisms for monitoring them are inadequate.

The legal and ethical questions raised by COVID-19 vaccine mandates are genuinely difficult. The tendency of commentators on both sides to treat them as simple reflects the broader failure of Australian public debate to engage seriously with complexity.

Beijing's coordinated assault on its technology, education, and property sectors has wiped hundreds of billions of dollars from market valuations. The political logic is clear. The economic consequences are not.

The Modern Slavery Act has been in force for several years, but its implications for board-level responsibility are still not widely understood. Directors who have delegated compliance downward need to reassess.

The Your Future Your Super performance test is the most significant reform to superannuation accountability in the system's history. Whether it will deliver genuinely better outcomes for fund members depends on implementation details that are still being worked through.

The proposal to give a government-appointed regulator the power to determine what constitutes harmful misinformation is one of the most significant threats to free expression in recent Australian legislative history. It deserves to be treated as such.

The collapse of China Evergrande Group is not simply a corporate failure. It is a test of the Chinese government's willingness to allow market discipline to function — a test with implications far beyond one company.

The economic disruption caused by COVID-19 will test the limits of Australian insolvency law and the duties of directors who face the prospect of trading while insolvent. The safe harbour provisions are relevant but widely misunderstood.

The speed of the COVID-19 market selloff has been without precedent in modern history. The policy response has been equally without precedent. The question now is whether the medicine is proportionate to the disease.

The economic shock of COVID-19 represents the most significant test of Australia's financial system since the GFC. The policy response has been large and rapid. Whether it has been well-targeted is a question that will occupy economists and regulators for years.

The restrictions on freedom of movement, association, and commerce introduced in response to COVID-19 are the most extensive in peacetime Australian history. The willingness to subject them to rigorous scrutiny has been, in some quarters, disappointingly limited.

Governments around the world have committed to fiscal packages of extraordinary scale. The politics of announcing the spending are straightforward. The politics of eventually paying for it will be considerably more complicated.

The safe harbour provisions introduced in 2017 were designed to encourage directors to pursue restructuring rather than immediately appointing administrators. The COVID-19 environment is precisely the circumstance they were designed for.

The companies that claimed JobKeeper payments while simultaneously rewarding executives with bonuses and paying dividends to shareholders were, in most cases, acting within the letter of the rules. The question of whether they were acting within the spirit of the programme deserves an honest answer.

The global movement prompted by the death of George Floyd has particular resonance in a country with its own unresolved history of Indigenous incarceration and deaths in custody. The conversation deserves more honesty than it is currently receiving.

When the cost of money is effectively zero, capital flows into assets. This is not a theory — it is an arithmetic identity. The consequences for housing, equities, and financial stability are now playing out in real time.

The shift to virtual annual general meetings during COVID-19 has raised legitimate questions about whether the accountability mechanisms that AGMs provide can be replicated in a remote format.

The buy now pay later industry has grown rapidly in Australia by offering a product that functions like consumer credit but is structured to avoid the regulatory obligations that apply to consumer credit. This regulatory arbitrage has real costs for consumers.

Facebook's decision to remove news from its Australian platform — and the government's subsequent negotiation — raised fundamental questions about the appropriate relationship between digital platforms and democratic institutions. Neither side covered itself in glory.

Markets have a long and distinguished history of pricing in recoveries before they arrive, and then being surprised when the path proves more complicated than expected. The current enthusiasm deserves measured scrutiny.

The financial services industry's response to Kenneth Hayne's recommendations has been, in some quarters, enthusiastic. In others, it has been something closer to managed resistance. The distinction is worth tracking carefully.

The scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change is strong. The quality of the policy debate in Australia is not. The tendency to treat anyone who questions specific policy proposals as a denier of the underlying science is intellectually dishonest.

When the US yield curve inverts — when short-term rates exceed long-term rates — it has preceded every recession of the past fifty years. The question is not whether it matters. It is how long the lag will be.

Six months after the Banking Royal Commission's final report, it is worth taking stock of what has changed in Australian financial services and what remains substantially the same.

A central bank that cuts rates three times in a year while simultaneously projecting confidence in the economic outlook is sending contradictory signals. Markets have noticed, even if the commentary has not.

The performance of Australian superannuation funds varies enormously. The mechanisms for communicating that variation to fund members — and for holding underperforming funds accountable — are inadequate to the scale of the problem.

The capacity of the Australian Press Council to hold media organisations accountable for breaches of standards is constrained by the fact that its funding comes from the organisations it regulates. This is a structural problem, not an incidental one.

The adoption of environmental, social, and governance frameworks by Australian listed companies has been rapid. The question of whether the adoption represents genuine change or sophisticated public relations is one that boards and their advisers should be asking more honestly.

The US-China trade conflict is not a negotiating tactic. It is a structural realignment of the global economic order. Australian businesses that have treated it as temporary background noise need to revise their assumptions.

The AUSTRAC action against Westpac, which alleged 23 million breaches of anti-money laundering law, is not an isolated compliance failure. It reflects a systemic inadequacy in the way Australian financial institutions have approached their AML obligations.

The termination of Israel Folau's contract by Rugby Australia raises questions about the extent to which employers can regulate the private religious expression of employees. The legal and principled dimensions of this question are not identical.

AUSTRAC's allegation that Westpac committed 23 million breaches of anti-money laundering laws is not a compliance failure. It is a governance failure of the first order. The distinction matters.

The exposure of genuine wrongdoing by powerful men is important and overdue. The conflation of serious misconduct with minor indiscretion, and the abandonment of basic principles of procedural fairness in the process, are problems that require naming.

The correction in global equity markets was not a crisis. It was a reminder that asset prices do not only go up — a reminder that many investors in an extended bull market apparently needed.

The evidence emerging from the Banking Royal Commission suggests that the misconduct documented was not the work of a few bad actors. It was systemic — which means it was, in some sense, permitted by the institutions involved.

The evidence presented to the Banking Royal Commission about the financial planning subsidiaries of Australia's major banks is among the most disturbing in the inquiry's history. The systematic nature of the misconduct is what makes it most troubling.

The opening weeks of Kenneth Hayne's Royal Commission have confirmed what many in the legal profession suspected: that the culture of Australia's major banks was considerably worse than their public relations suggested.

The term 'culture wars' is often used to dismiss legitimate disagreements about values, institutions, and the proper limits of state power. Those disagreements are real, and they deserve to be engaged with rather than dismissed.

The interim report of the Banking Royal Commission is a measured document. It is also a devastating one. The gap between the conduct documented and the regulatory response that preceded it is, at points, extraordinary.

The responsible lending obligations introduced after the GFC were supposed to prevent banks from extending credit to borrowers who could not afford it. The Royal Commission has documented, at length, how those obligations were applied in practice.

The simultaneous crises in Turkey, Argentina, and South Africa are not unrelated events. They are symptoms of a global liquidity withdrawal that has particular implications for commodity-dependent economies like Australia.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart deserves serious engagement with its substantive proposals. That engagement requires honesty about both what the proposals would achieve and what the practical and constitutional difficulties might be.

Kenneth Hayne's final report is the most significant examination of Australian financial sector conduct in a generation. Its recommendations are serious. Whether they will be implemented seriously is a different question.

The Federal Court's findings against Westpac in relation to manipulation of the bank bill swap rate represent an important moment in Australian financial regulation. The penalties imposed were significant. Whether they were proportionate is a separate question.

2018 was the year that the accumulated distortions of a decade of quantitative easing began, slowly and painfully, to correct. The process is far from complete.

The withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership leaves a vacuum that China is more than willing to fill. Australian trade policy needs to reckon with this reality quickly.

The systemic underpayment of workers across the 7-Eleven network raises questions that go beyond the individual franchisees involved. The liability of the franchisor for conduct it was positioned to prevent deserves examination.

The debate over Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act raises a fundamental question about the purpose of law: is it to protect people from genuine harm, or to protect them from discomfort? These are not the same thing.

The consistent ability of Australia's major banks to settle regulatory matters without admission of wrongdoing and without consequences proportionate to the conduct involved raises legitimate questions about whether the regulatory framework is adequate.

Lending standards, interest-only loans, and the concentration of household wealth in a single asset class represent a combination of risks that regulators have been slow to address with adequate seriousness.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has a long history of describing its enforcement activities in terms of cases commenced rather than outcomes achieved. A more candid assessment would be useful.

The ABC is required by its charter to present news and information with impartiality and accuracy. The gap between that requirement and the organisation's actual output is a legitimate matter of public interest — and public funding.

Budget forecasts built on commodity price assumptions that the market has already revised deserve to be challenged publicly and with some urgency. The arithmetic is not encouraging.

The payday lending industry has constructed products that are mathematically incapable of improving the financial position of their customers. The regulatory response has been inadequate. The harm continues.

The accountability frameworks that apply to listed companies do not translate neatly to government-owned enterprises. The result, in too many cases, is that the worst features of both public and private sector governance are combined.

The incentive structures of contemporary public life have made the claim of victimhood a powerful instrument for securing sympathy, resources, and exemption from scrutiny. The consequences for honest public discourse are significant.

Every generation produces a speculative episode that, in retrospect, looks obvious. The current enthusiasm for cryptocurrency has the hallmarks of one. That does not mean it will end tomorrow.

The explosion of initial coin offerings in 2017 has created a category of financial product that exists, by design, outside the regulatory perimeter. The question of whether the perimeter should be extended is one that Australian regulators are answering too slowly.

The strategic and financial failure of Masters Home Improvement raises questions about board oversight, capital allocation, and the accountability of executives for decisions that destroyed significant shareholder value.

The combination of negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount has concentrated Australian household wealth in residential property in ways that have significant consequences for financial stability, housing affordability, and intergenerational equity.

The decision by the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank to push rates below zero represents the most audacious monetary experiment in modern financial history. The results are not encouraging.

The institution that was designed to challenge comfortable assumptions has, in too many cases, become an institution designed to protect them. This is not a minor cultural shift. It is a fundamental betrayal of the university's purpose.

The obligation of listed companies to disclose material information to the market promptly is one of the cornerstones of investor protection. The number of companies that treat it as optional is remarkable.

The immediate market reaction to the Brexit vote was predictable. The medium-term consequences for Australian trade, investment, and the currency are considerably less so.

The Future of Financial Advice reforms were introduced to address widespread conflicts of interest in the financial planning industry. Three years on, the evidence that the underlying culture has changed is mixed at best.

The distance between what Australian politicians say and what they do has always been significant. What is new is the apparent belief that the gap no longer needs to be explained or defended. It simply needs to be managed.

Australia's compulsory superannuation system has accumulated more than $2 trillion in assets. The question of who is genuinely accountable for how those assets are managed deserves more scrutiny than it receives.

The growth of third-party litigation funding in Australia has transformed the economics of shareholder class actions. Whether it has improved justice, or simply created a new category of financial product, is a question worth examining.

Australia's dividend imputation system is expensive, regressive in its distribution of benefits, and almost entirely absent from serious fiscal policy discussion. These facts deserve more public attention than they receive.

The collapse of trust in mainstream media is not primarily the result of social media disruption. It is the result of a profession that abandoned the distinction between reporting and advocacy, and then expressed surprise when its audience noticed.

The Financial System Inquiry chaired by David Murray produced 44 recommendations of varying ambition. Whether the government's response will be adequate to the structural challenges it identified is a question that deserves continued scrutiny.

The numbers coming out of the Pilbara tell a story that the commodity bulls are not yet willing to hear. The correction in iron ore is not a pause — it is a structural recalibration.

The administration of Dick Smith Electronics raises serious questions about what the board understood about the company's inventory position and whether that understanding was adequately disclosed to shareholders.

The principle of free expression is easy to defend when the speech in question is agreeable. Its value lies entirely in protecting speech that is disagreeable. Too many of its ostensible defenders have forgotten this.

When the Reserve Bank cuts rates for the second time in three months, it is worth asking what problem it believes it is solving — and whether lower borrowing costs are genuinely the answer.

The difference between a superannuation fund that charges 0.5% per annum and one that charges 1.5% per annum is not 1%. Over a working lifetime, it is the difference between a comfortable and an inadequate retirement. This is not being communicated clearly.

Australian corporate law imposes clear duties of care, loyalty, and good faith on directors. The enforcement of those duties has, historically, been considerably less clear. That is beginning to change.

Australia has established royal commissions into trade unions and financial services. The accountability problems in our public institutions extend considerably further than either inquiry has examined.

Australian equity markets have spent the better part of a decade treating Chinese growth as a permanent feature of the landscape. Permanent features have a habit of changing.

The practices of Australia's life insurance industry in handling disability and income protection claims have attracted sustained criticism from financial counsellors, consumer advocates, and some regulators. The criticism is warranted.

The two strikes rule — which allows shareholders to spill a board after two consecutive protest votes on remuneration — has proven more symbolic than substantive. The question is whether stronger mechanisms are needed.

The expansion of the category of speech considered unacceptable in public life has not made our discourse more civil. It has made it less honest — and in ways that serve the interests of those in power rather than those who are not.