ASIC bemoans that it can’t afford best barristers
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has bemoaned the fact that it needs to get permission to pay the sorts of rates being charged by Australia’s top barristers.
Giving evidence before the Parliament Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services, ASIC executives pointed out that the rates via which the regulator was allowed to retain barristers had not changed since 2011.
The officials said that ASIC and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission had sent a joint letter to the Attorney-General’s Department raising the issue.
“We do have a number of concerns in relation to the impact that the caps [on expenditure] have on the ability of particularly ASIC to do its work,” a senior executive told the committee.
“The daily rates at which agencies can brief senior counsel remain capped under the directions at $3,500 unless approval is obtained to move above $5,000 from the Attorney-General,” he said. “Those rates have not increased since 2011 and the $5,000 cap for seeking approval from the Attorney-General has been in place since 2006.”
“The gap between Commonwealth rates and senior counsel commercial rates continues to widen while in 2019 rates for senior counsel were 45% of Commonwealth rates today, for many of the more highly-regarded and experienced counsel the Commonwealth rates represent as little as one quarter or one-fifth of their daily commercial rates,” the official said.
He said that top rate for experienced counsel was between $28,000 and $30,000 a day.
Sure ASIC let’s just increase the Adviser Levy to $50k each pa. NOT.
If ASIC spent far less persecuting Advisers and chased real crooks they would be a far more relevant regulator
Those daily rates of $28 to $30k a day are extreme and excessive.
If you read the FASEA Financial Planners and Advisers Code of Ethics, the introduction states:
While the ethos of “the market” legitimises the pursuit of self-interest through the satisfaction of others’ wants, the ethos of “the professions” aims to secure the public good through the subordination of self-interest in favour of serving the interests of others.
In return for renouncing the pursuit of self-interest, society often provides members of the professions with a range of formal and informal privileges (such as a “monopoly” right to undertake certain types of work).
Clearly this waffle does not apply to barristers, who obviously care little for the public good in the trade-off between self interest and serving the public. Surely they should be willing to work for ASIC at daily rates that 99.99% of the population would be extremely happy with. Maybe it is time for them to think about doing some pro-bono for ASIC.
A well respected partner of a serious law firm once told me ‘If you have a compelling array of facts, evidence, witness corroboration and the prior interpretation of the law proves your case for you, you could almost have a chimp represent your side as a barrister”.
Clearly if ASIC are uncertain of these, and they’re meant to be the investigating authority with full unhindered access to all records by law, then blaming the ‘poor’ barristers is akin to a bad tradie blaming his tools for the mess he’s made…
(Meanwhile unions and industry funds remain uninvestigated)
A normal business would look at what resources they have, cut expenditure in some areas that don’t provide as much value as others and then prioritise expenditure in the area they need it. Giving a bloated bureaucracy an open chequebook is a recipe for disaster. Prescriptive compliance for professional advisers is not needed… cough cough breach reporting regime, 25 adviser registers, 612 info guides, etc etc. Meanwhile scammers, property spruikers, ASX “lifestyle” directors, and grifting Unions just waltz on.
Why do they need the best Barristers when they have Sherlock Holmes in their ranks?
You wouldn’t even need a Barrister when you have Sherlock right?
They should aspire to finance his pipe though for the next pantomime. I’m ok with that.