Q&A with ASIC Chair Joe Longo at the National Press Club, Canberra on 5 November 2025
Tom Connell: So, talking about the need to innovate, I think you alluded to the element of regulate along the way. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, it sounds as though you’d be in favour of not going too heavy. Obviously, you need rules in place as technology emerges. But would you be in favour of not having too many regulations to stifle it, even if it means you need to add things along the way? Is that the way to go so you don’t stifle?
Joe Longo: No, it’s more nuanced, Tom. I think we all want innovation. Who’s against innovation? The issue is that the legal and regulatory framework needs to provide a good foundation for people to do that confidently. And so that really is about the details, about what’s in the legislation, about how do you apply for that licence? What do you need to establish the licence you want to get, and what are the risks that your innovation might raise?
The other thing is, from a regulatory perspective, some of the reforms around data and transparency that we’re asking for in connection with private credit, if we get that, then that gives everybody more confidence about growing that sector and being innovative there. Because if you know what’s going on in a space that’s otherwise opaque, then you can be more confident, can’t you, about risk-taking? And you won’t be surprised by emerging issues, because you know what’s going on.
So to me, there is a role for the public sector and regulation being adjusted and developed in a way that makes innovation welcome, that makes people think, well, if I’ve got this idea, I know what to do. I’m not going to be breaking the law. And I’m almost certainly going to need a licence, but I’m pretty clear as to what I’m going to have to need or establish to get that licence.
Tom Connell: And on the spectrum of obligations you spoke about between private and public, would there be some elements of the private that would have more obligations, even though it’s a sliding spectrum, if you like? Do you see the need, when you spoke about transparency there, for some elements of the private –
Joe Longo: I think in the private, there’s a lot of work being done on private credit, but as a general proposition, what we think is we’ve identified poorer practices and better practices, in that sector. And so we say there’s existing guidance and law that we think we’re sort of reminding the private credit sector that they have to comply with. And there are other areas, and the surveillance report we published this morning goes into the details, where, frankly, the practices are unattractive. They’re not in the interests of investors and they create risk.
And so we’re calling on industry, and I’m happy to say that we’re getting a positive response to say, well, come on, we need you to develop standards that address these issues. These standards exist in the US, so we’re suggesting to the sector that you don’t have to start with a blank piece of paper. You can get some inspiration from the US and the UK. That doesn’t mean, by the way, we’re just going to copy what the Americans do or the Brits do, because there are some unique features of our local market. But the key point is that nobody wants more regulation. It’s a bit like saying, I like innovation, no one likes more regulation. But that’s where this is heading, if we’re going to protect the public, in the public interest.
But I’m optimistic. I think we’re getting very constructive feedback from all aspects of industry, and I expect over the next six to 12 months to – it probably won’t be me, but there’s someone else reporting to the public about progress.
Tom Connell: Will you be handing over to your successor some low-hanging fruit from discussions with the US or Europe that people say, what are you –
Joe Longo: There’s no more low-hanging fruit where I work.
Tom Connell: No?
Joe Longo: No, our job, my job, our Commissioners’ job, is to look for difficult problems and solve them. So there’s no low-hanging fruit left, from what I can see.
Tom Connell: And even though so many of the changes are about speed and making things happen, you spoke about slowing for super transfers, for example. So that’s an example, I suppose, of protections, in particular for individuals that you need to be still wary of?
Joe Longo: Well, I think the superannuation-switching catastrophe that’s been unfolding with First Guardian and Master Shield and related funds, it all started with ordinary Australians, in many cases, moving, in my words, their super from a relatively safe, conventional environment into a high-risk environment. And there’s plenty of blame to go around for what went wrong there. And one of the things we’re suggesting is that we need to slow people down a bit.
And that essentially means, if you go and buy a house or a car or a major financial investment, I mean, most of us put some time into that. We don’t do it on the same day. And unfortunately, because of the industrialisation of the approach to this misconduct, a lot of Australians were talked into moving their super on the same day or the next day. It’s pretty bad.
Tom Connell: Is there almost a psychological difference with super? We’ve seen various scams and frauds on it where, because it’s not in people’s hands and if you’re in your 40s or 50s, it’s a while away, even though it’s the biggest investment you have, you sometimes make mistakes of that nature?
Joe Longo: The tactics that are being used by people involved in this activity – Australians respond to something they’ve read online. They’re persuaded that they can get a better deal or better return on their super by doing what’s been suggested. And so they’re literally tricked, or persuaded, as I say, to move their money from somewhere safe to somewhere very unsafe.
And the people doing this – none of us should think that this isn’t going to happen to you. The sales tactics are very slick. They’re very professional. I’ve been briefed by my Commissioners who are doing much of the work on this – they’re sitting over there – that people are kept on the phone for hours at a time, and they’re sent documents in real time. So this is a really sophisticated activity that’s designed to persuade people to move their money from one place to another. The scam scenario is a bit different. Scams have their own level of badness, but different to what I’m talking about.
Tom Connell: And you alluded to one phone call, so there’s no opportunity for them to literally talk it over with one other person, to have that all occur on the one phone call, and that’s the slowdown that you –
Joe Longo: Well, theoretically, there’s an opportunity, but the practicality is not. So just going back to the first part of your question, if the system makes it really easy to move your money from one place to another, then once they’ve got you, it’s gone. Once the money’s moved, it’s very hard for you to reverse your strategy.
But ASIC’s been doing a lot of work in this area. We’ve had some success getting our foot on lost investor funds. We have over 40 investigations going on, a number of court cases, and you can expect us to remain very active to do the best we can to hold people accountable for this awful activity.
Tom Connell: Going to the floor now; John Kehoe from the AFR.
John Kehoe: Thanks, Mr Longo. It’s John Kehoe from The Australian Financial Review. I’m going to admit to having a bit of assistance with this question, not from artificial intelligence, but from one of my learned colleagues who follows this a little more closely than I do.
But you did mention superannuation trustees in your speech, and then you also touched on the First Guardian and Shield matters there. Is there a future for the outsourced trustee model in superannuation, like we’ve seen involved in the First Guardian and the Shield matters? Or should all super platforms and funds be required to get and use their own trustee licence, so when things go wrong we know who is actually responsible?
Joe Longo: Well, there are two separate issues there. It’s up to the superannuation funds and trustees to make their own decisions about whether to insource or outsource critical infrastructure or capability. The responsibility legally never leaves them.
In connection with superannuation trustees who run a platform, there’s existing law on that, and that’s being tested in some court cases at the moment. But I think what we’re looking for there is a higher level, or certainly a more serious level of diligence from superannuation trustees as to what platforms or what products they’ll permit on their platform. Because they’re basically saying to people that they’re safe to invest in. It’s all part of regulated super.
Tom Connell: Jack Quail from The Australian.
Jack Quail: Mr Longo, thank you very much for your address. Jack Quail from The Australian. I just wanted to ask about your surveillance report across those 28 retail and wholesale funds. You identified multiple failings across governance, transparency, valuations, credit management. Can you give any indication of whether the Commission will be pursuing any penalties against any of the funds that were surveilled for any potential breaches of the law or falling foul of their obligations?
Joe Longo: Yes. Well, there are 28 entities involved. We’ve already started. The way this works is at the end of a surveillance of that kind, we will give entity specific feedback to each entity. We’ll write them a letter usually. We’ve already started doing that with some of the bigger entities, and that’s a piece of work that we’re finishing off.‑
The surveillance process itself, ironically, led to improvements in standards and practices. I think I was quoted somewhere about saying they saw us coming, they should have seen us coming. Well, some of them did, and they lifted their standards. So that in and of itself is in the public interest, that having conducted that surveillance, that was a nice result, because that’s the whole point. We’re trying to lift standards, and we’re trying to encourage people to say, well, this is good practice, this is bad practice.
Now, in terms of enforcement, I don’t rule out that for some of these entities, perhaps not arising out of this particular surveillance, but I don’t rule it out, but there will be more additional surveillance work done. And some of the activity or practices we’re seeing are rather unattractive, and are close to being illegal. So if we’re satisfied of that, you can expect us to take action. Because I really want the sector to get the message that lift your game, or you’re going to be hearing from us more and more.
Tom Connell: And can you allude to the practices that are bordering on illegal specifically?
Joe Longo: Oh, they’re all in the report. They’re on the surveillance report.
Tom Connell:Assume I haven’t read the whole thing.
Joe Longo: I hate to tell you this, Tom, it’s on page 3. It’s OK. It’s OK. It’s OK. You’re not an orphan. I think of all the reports attached to our media release today, I’m sure that one was the last one most people would read. But in all seriousness, it’s actually a good question, because there is an existing law and ASIC guidance that we think is relevant.
But I’m often pressed about this. The question of illegality and whether the conduct rises to a point where we’re prepared to formally investigate it, and use our formal powers and take a case to the Federal Court or Supreme Court, that’s another matter.
So we run about 200 investigations a year. So for serious misconduct, you can expect us to be there. Otherwise, you can expect us to have intense surveillance, more stop orders. We have an extensive toolkit, and we’ll use it.
Tom Connell: Millie Muroi from The SMH and The Age.
Millie Muroi: Hi Mr Longo, thank you so much for your address. Millie Muroi from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. You’ve talked about Australia potentially facing a Minsky moment with a market collapse. What would such a Minsky moment in private credit do to superannuation funds, and are you satisfied that super funds in Australia that have invested heavily in private credit have taken enough precautions?
Joe Longo: I’m not saying we’re going to have a Minsky moment anytime soon, but there is a risk of a Minsky moment. What is a Minsky moment? The idea is that we go through a period of relative calm. People think everything’s fine, everything’s stable, there are stable returns, people are making money, and that tends to lead to riskier activity, to more leverage. And then things suddenly go wrong.
And so the background of the Minsky moment is my favourite footnote in the speech. You’ll see it in the footnote. But I’m not suggesting for a second that we’re facing one right now. But I fear that the Minsky moment may arise if we don’t have all the data and transparency we need to head it off. At the moment, the private credit sector is relatively small. It’s around $200 billion. In the US, by the way, it’s $2 trillion, just to give you some idea. It’s just amazing. But even for me to say $200 billion, I was saying to someone earlier, that’s a little bit of a guess. It could be much, much bigger.
And so part of my concern is we’re shining a light on this. We’re getting cooperation from the market in the work we’re doing. I’m optimistic about standards going up. But the last thing we need, history tells us when things go wrong, everyone is surprised. We need to have systems and data gathering and transparency that just minimises the risk that at least we have some chance of predicting when things are going wrong. But that’s what that’s all about.
Millie Muroi: And are you confident that super funds in Australia are sort of doing enough? The ones that have invested quite heavily in private credit?
Joe Longo: Yeah, I’m not so worried about the super funds in this respect. They have their own quite sophisticated risk management and investment operation. I think the issues facing superannuation are much broader. Member services, what to do with investing their assets. They’re running out of investable assets in Australia. Where do they go? There are a range of other issues.
But the only other thing I would say about superannuation, and I allude to it in the speech, is that we need to be paying attention to our superannuation funds. It’s not because they’re behaving poorly. That’s sort of missing the point. We need to be paying attention to them because of their fundamental significance to the economy. They’re over $4 trillion now. Within the next 10 years, they’ll be $8 trillion. And they’re driving capital flows through our economy. That’s very unusual, in not too many countries. We have a lot to be proud of with super, but we cannot be complacent about the running of our superannuation funds.
Millie Muroi: Thank you.
Tom Connell: On the private capital aspect of the potential Minsky moment you spoke about, so assuming that the amount gets bigger, what about it concerns you? What do you want to know? Where do you want to lift the bonnet to get –
Joe Longo: Well, at the moment, one of the reports we published this morning is by EY‑Pantheon. It’s a really good report. It talks about the target zone. There’s a really helpful graph that diagrammatically spells out where we’re the international outlier in terms of – so a good example is wholesale funds aren’t required to be registered with us. There’s a whole lot of activity going on out there we’re just not aware of.
Now, I know we’re going through a period which I absolutely support and led of regulatory simplification. And nobody wants more regulation. Everybody knows that too much regulation has a chilling effect on the economy. But the regulation we do have still has a purpose to serve. And if this regulation is not working, we get rid of it. But occasionally we need new rules and reform to support an activity we do want to encourage, and in this case, private credit. So it’s sort of being nuanced and sophisticated and mature about what needs to be done to encourage what we want, discourage what we don’t want.
Tom Connell: And to borrow the sort of saying from up the Hill here, the net impact would be less regulation even if some elements would have some more. Is that fair to say?
Joe Longo: Well, there’s a lot of talk about regulation. But the reality is we’re not very good at measuring the beneficial impacts of changes to regulation. We all sort of instinctively feel that the cumulative effect of the regulatory frameworks that we have in our daily lives sound too burdensome. But how we go about reducing that and how we measure, and where do we start, and how do we measure which reforms are going to have the biggest impact, that’s the big public policy question. No one’s really cracked that.
So all the regulators in Australia have done some work with this. With the Treasurer’s office, we’ve tried to figure out, well, if we do this, will it have a beneficial impact? So, for example, file fewer forms or make the forms easier to read. Or in ASIC’s case, finding the statutory instruments on the website would be a pretty good start. So there are lots of things that are actually quite straightforward, that are within our gift to do now. But they do require commitment and investment in technology systems and processes, which is another subject.
Tom Connell: But you mentioned the Treasurer’s office. There’s intent there. You get a good reception when you start talking about –
Joe Longo: Well, the Treasurer wrote to all of us. There were a series of roundtables. I won’t go over all of that. It’s all very public. There’s no doubt that the Government and Treasury are very focused on these issues. But ASIC will play its humble role, Tom.
Tom Connell: No doubt. Remember your outgoings, so you can be very honest to that. Not that you’re not being. Jacob Shteyman from AAP.
Jacob Shteyman: Hi, Mr Longo. Thanks for your address, Jacob Shteyman from AAP. You mentioned, obviously, the issues at the ASX and the impact that that’s having on IPOs. I just wanted to ask, how much of a setback is CEBO planning to sell their Australian arm, in that goal of providing a bit more competition in listings? And would you have to, I guess, reassess their licence depending on who a potential –
Joe Longo: You mean ASX or CEBO?
Jacob Shteyman: Oh, CEBO’s.
Joe Longo: Yes. Well, CEBO started working with us to apply for their licence last year. It took a while to get to the position where we gave them their market operation licence early in October. And towards the end of that process, there was a change of leadership at CEBO, and they did a global strategic review.
So I think my first point is, Australia’s not being picked on. So you’ve got Australia, Canada, Japan so far, where CEBO have made a fundamental commercial decision that the focus of their business has changed, and they want to reinvest elsewhere. And they’ve made that very clear publicly that they regard Australia as being a good place to do business in.
So I’m rather optimistic that now that CEBO have made that decision, it’s their decision to make, that there will be a successful sale process, which has only barely begun. It’ll take time. I think the fact that they have this licence makes the sale of the business, I think, more attractive, because any buyer won’t have to get the licence.
They’ll need our approval, I hasten to add, but a serious buyer of this business will find it attractive that CEBO has this licence. And I’ve made it very clear publicly that we’ll do whatever we reasonably can to be facilitative and supportive of the process. But in the end, ASIC will make a decision in the public interest as to whether or not to approve whoever CEBO decide to sell to. But we’re at the very – this is going to take time.
Tom Connell: Next question, Corrie McLeod.
Corrie McLeod: Hello. Thank you for your address. Corrie McLeod from innovationaus.com. I wanted to ask about, you’ve mapped out a lot of directed energy towards getting the settings right to really facilitate the innovation you’re talking about, and that there’s a moment that Australia can grasp. I feel like we hear that across lots of different sectors, whether it’s healthcare, et cetera. We get lots of great ingredients, but we don’t drive it home. From a cultural perspective, what’s going to need to change outside of, say, the fintechs? Where are the people and the culture that will drive through this change, and make the most of all the work that’s gone into getting the settings right?
Joe Longo: Well, as far as cultural considerations go, if you step back, that’s everybody. It’s public and private sector. I think one of the things that I feel very strongly about is the need for us as a society to take science a lot more seriously, whether it’s science in the boardroom or science in regulators, just science in general.
So I think if you’re talking about culture, a fundamental curiosity around science and technology. And we’re seeing some of that, mixed feelings around AI, for example. We’ve been doing some work there, and the recent surveys show Australians don’t trust AI. In fact, levels of trust are going down. And, of course, many Australian businesses are investing in AI, including the big banks, where we want them to for all sorts of reasons. So I think the cultural factor, I would say, open to science.
As far as what I’m getting at in the speech, in the legal framework and law reform, I think as a society we need to figure out what problems do we really want to solve and prioritise them, and that’s a matter for Government. It’s a matter for all of us. It’s a matter for regulators and Government working together and figuring out what do we really want. That’s one of the reasons I support the reinvigoration of a group like CAMAC, because I think the whole of Government and regulators need all the help we can get to figure out what issues require attention and that you should give priority to. Because we all know Government has a lot of issues to deal with, and they can’t all be solved at once. We need to prioritise.
Corrie McLeod: Thank you.
Tom Connell: Julie Hare.
Julie Hare: Thank you for your speech. Julie Hare, I’m a Director here at the Club. You’ve spoken a lot about the growth in the private credit sector, and that ASIC has basically put them on notice and told them to lift their game. Could you please itemise for us in the room and who are watching on television what you consider to be the most concerning consumer-harming practices that you see in the private credit sector, and what your message is to actors in that area?
Joe Longo: Well, the consumers are indirectly affected. A lot of people have access to private credit, like the tradies, people in the construction industry where they can’t get finance elsewhere. So to that extent, the private credit is providing a service. We’re not saying private credit is bad. Private credit done well is good. The issue, though, is if there’s a poor disclosure of fees, conflicts of interest, matters of that nature, they’re all enumerated in the material we published this morning, then that’s going to lead to bad outcomes for investors and consumers.
But it’s very important to sort of start at the beginning, that when you really step back, if you want to borrow money in Australia, you can go to a bank or you can go to private credit. In fact, that’s one of the definitions of private credit. It’s non-bank finance. So it’s a broad church. So I think the work we’ve done is intended to shine a light on this sector, not because we don’t have faith in its future, but because we want it to have a future. And if it doesn’t do these things, then we’re not going to get the benefits in the economy.
Julie Hare: OK, thank you.
Tom Connell: John Kehoe from The AFR.
John Kehoe: Thank you, Chairman. How much of a slowdown do you think is required to potentially stop or make people think when they’re considering switching superannuation funds to some of these things that might be being hawked around? Is there a role for regulation in doing that? And is there a risk on the flip side of that, that actually that might be used as a barrier to entry by big existing funds to stop their members switching to other competitors, or indeed self-managed funds?
Joe Longo: Well, this has to be thought through. I mean, introducing frictions into the super-switching process is something that I’m sure the superannuation sector is open to dealing with. No one wants to preside over a problem like this if there are some potential solutions. So I think there’s going to require some engagement with the sector as to what the practical solutions might be.
And secondly, the frictions may not be for every transfer. So if you’re transferring your money from one safe place to another, then that’s fine. I think the remedy we’re looking for, or the issue we’re trying to deal with, is people sending their money to odd places. Still within regulated super space, ironically, but sending their money to an entirely different space and very quickly. And remember, that often involves lead generators and financial advisors.
So there’s no silver bullet here. I think the idea of slowing things down at the beginning, I’ll call it like a cooling off, is to help people sort of step back and say, well, I can’t actually move this money for three days. Well, that’s three days they’ve got to get a second opinion, have second thoughts. It’s as practical as that. Because some of the misconduct, as I said earlier, it all happens very quickly. So anything that just sort of slows people down, makes them think, sleep on it. We all know from life experience that if you slow things down, you give yourself a better chance of making a wiser decision.
Tom Connell: Is there a missing education aspect? I must admit I’m a sucker for a financial crime podcast. And when it comes from Bernie Madoff to Melissa Caddick, if it’s a guarantee of 10% plus every year, that’s a pretty easy red flag. Is that something missing from –
Joe Longo: I think this is an issue that our society has had for many, many years. The question of financial literacy and what we do about it, it’s a big subject, Tom. I think from ASIC’s perspective, we run a very successful website called Money Smart and we get a lot of positive feedback. It gets about 10 million hits a year. It’s a very useful place to go. People find it very helpful with their superannuation, mortgage calculators, matters of that nature.
But I think as a generalisation, I know from my own family life and just general life that a lot of people don’t really understand superannuation, or don’t understand basic financial issues. And I think it’s an issue that needs attention. But this is an issue that we’ve been grappling with as a society. And not just us, by the way. Internationally, the International Organisation of Securities Commissions that we’re a member of has a whole committee that does nothing else. There’s a global push about how do you raise financial literacy awareness. It’s a very common problem.
Tom Connell: Is the best way more of it in schools? There’s been a big push for that.
Joe Longo: There’s all sorts of potential remedies. And well, yes, one obvious place perhaps to start is to look at school curricula. But there are a whole lot of factors that go into the way people think. So if you go into – I’ve got an economist in the room here. Danny Och can explain this better than I can. But there are all sorts of factors that go into the way people assess risk. And it’s not rational. There are lots of literature on that. So very often people don’t know how to assess risk. And that’s true in general life as well as in financial decisions.
Tom Connell: Jack Quail.
Jack Quail: Thank you very much, Mr Longo. Jack Quail from The Australian again. I just wanted to ask about the WiseTech, it’s the subject of an ASIC probe, obviously, at the moment. Should Richard White, in your view, remain Executive Chairman while ASIC is investigating for insider trading?
Joe Longo: Yes, I’m not talking about particular cases today. Nice try, though.
Jack Quail: Thank you. Cheers.
Tom Connell: Jacob Shteyman.
Jacob Shteyman: Thanks again, Mr Longo. You’ve got about six or seven months left in the job, so it’s probably a bit premature to start referring to you in the past tense. But when you look back on your reign at ASIC –
Joe Longo: You mean, Joe who?
Jacob Shteyman: You’ve done quite a lot of work, these big projects like private and public markets work, the digital transformation at ASIC. Is there anything that you wish you had a bit more time to work on?
Joe Longo: Yes. Well, I think when we first started, when Sarah Court and I started on the same day, I think we inherited an organisation that had some challenges. That took a while to work through. I suppose, with hindsight, it would have been good if we could have pulled off the reorganisation of the agency a little bit more quickly. We got there in the end, but I would have liked for that to have happened more quickly.
But even in the last two and a half years, I really feel as if the agency has begun to achieve what I felt I wanted for it, and that was – for the ASIC people here, they’re going to roll their eyes, because I say it every day of the week – to be modern, confident and ambitious. That’s what a modern regulator should be. Modern, confident, ambitious. And the proof points for that, from my perspective, is that we’ve doubled the number of investigations. We’re in court every day of the week. We are the most active law enforcement agency in the country. We’re in the Federal Court every day of the week. We’re in the State Supreme Courts. We’re in the High Court at least two or three times a year. We’re in Magistrates Courts running cases of a summary nature.
So ASIC is on the case on the enforcement side, and my personal view is that one supports the other. So on the regulatory side, we’ve done some amazing work on hardship, some landmark work holding the banks accountable on hardship. We’ve done some landmark work around scams. The capital markets work that we’ve been doing the last 12 months, I’m really very proud of. The amount of work that’s gone into that work is amazing, and I know it’s having impact; one, because of the feedback we get. But as I mentioned earlier, I was in the US and Europe in the last month or so, and people are asking me questions about the work we’re doing. And so there’s no doubt that it’s having impact.
And the other part about ASIC that I really want to – is that we need to be on the front foot. And so if there are issues around regulatory complexity, we need to call it out. We need to do our part to deal with it. And so the other piece of work that I think, I hope will continue as well as the capital markets work – and this, by the way, doesn’t require law reform – is getting our own act together. Modernising our website. Reducing the number of forms. Finding those statutory instruments. Rewriting them when we do. Do something about regulatory guidance. People like our regulatory guidance, but they tend to be senior lawyers. So everyone else finds them a bit hard to read.
And so there’s a lot of work a good regulator can do to be modern, confident, ambitious. And I think that work needs to continue. So I think they’re the sorts of things on my mind. And the other – and then I’ll finish giving examples – we got the registries back just over a year ago. It feels much longer. But some of you might remember the modern business register program. Everything went to the ATO, came back to ASIC last year. And so an enormous amount of work is going on to stabilise and modernise our professional and business registers, which matter to everybody, to every small business in the country. So I think the ASIC of today is very different to the ASIC of four years ago.
Tom Connell: A couple of mentions of the website. Can’t you just tell someone to give it a makeover? Has the bureau made it harder, maybe?
Joe Longo: I tried that. It’s actually more complicated than you think. But we’ve got some very clever, dedicated people at ASIC who, without additional funding, have performed miracles on our website. But if you really want ASIC to go all the way, we need funding for our digital transformation, which I’ve been banging on about for four years. So that will come as no surprise to Treasury or Government.
Tom Connell: Alright. That’s clear enough. Corrie McLeod.
Corrie McLeod: Corrie McLeod again. Looking back over your time, what was the single biggest challenge that you had in the role? And is it the same as what you expected when you went into it?
Joe Longo: There were challenges at the beginning. A number of issues arising out of the immediate past of the agency. And I think we embarked on a journey looking at our culture, our governance, our systems and processes, the way in which we approached enforcement. I think we were always pretty good at it. But under Sarah Court’s leadership, it’s been exceptional. So I think I’m proud of all of that. But there’s no doubt that from the beginning there was a lot of change that was required. And in saying that, I don’t mean to cast aspersions on previous Chairs or Commissioners, but I’m just trying to be honest with you.
Tom Connell: I’m getting the nod from John Kehoe, he’s desperate for one more.
Joe Longo: I thought it was like one each.
Tom Connell: Soft rules here at the Club. Yes, John.
John Kehoe: Chairman, the mark of good leadership, one aspect is preparing or tilling the ground for successes after you move on. You’ve just given a ringing endorsement to Sarah Court. I’m sure you’ve got some terrific other senior colleagues. Do you feel like that you have potentially prepared successes internally in ASIC who could step into the Chair role when you do leave at the end of May?
Joe Longo: We have excellent Commissioners, including Sarah Court, but I think no one will be surprised to hear me say that it’s a matter for the Treasurer and Treasury as to the process and decision as to who the next Chair of ASIC will be.
One thing you did say, John, that I would like to highlight, and that is one of the things that we’ve definitely done is refreshed and reinvigorated the leadership of ASIC. So we have three new Commissioners. We have an entirely new exco, pretty much. We have our new CEO’s here, not so new, but pretty new, sitting here. We have a new general counsel, a new head of HR. We’ve made a lot of changes through the ranks of the organisation. There’s a real sense of momentum. We are attracting some terrific people. Some of my top people in data analytics have doctorates, and they’re keen.
So that’s the sort of regulator I want ASIC to be, on the front foot, attracting really keen, talented people, not only lawyers, but from across the spectrum of expertise that our country has.
Tom Connell: We’d better get one from someone a bit closer to being able to access their super, Maurice Riley.
Joe Longo: You’re not going to take that, are you?
Maurice Riley: I’m worried the Board met without me the other day. Looking to the future, what are the future skills that the Commission’s going to – I mean, this is a changing world, very rapidly, as you’ve outlined in your speech today. What are the sort of future talent and skills are you going to need to attract to be on top of this? And can you compete with the private market for such talent?
Joe Longo: We’re a great place to work. We are a talent attractor. It’s not just the Commissioners, of course, but the senior executives, some of whom are in the room. I mentioned Calissa because of her leadership in the capital markets work. Everybody knows that you’re going to make more money in the private sector. I know that. I mean, I’ve been in and out of the private and public sector.
But people come to ASIC because we do great work and we’re great people. The teams that I have the interaction with – I mean, I mentioned doctorates before. That’s not unusual. Doctorates, higher degrees, science backgrounds, law, accounting, the various backgrounds. So people who come to ASIC come because they’re going to get great work, and work with great people and solve the problems that affect everybody.
And so that’s why they work at ASIC. They’re not there to make lots of money. Now, that doesn’t mean if you are making lots of money in the private sector that I’m holding that against you, but I’m just trying to answer your question. But that’s why people come to ASIC.
As far as the future of ASIC is concerned, I have no doubt whatsoever it’s a bright future, because we have a lot of clever senior people who are leading the place. As to the Commissioners themselves, again, that’s a matter for the Treasurer. The legislation talks about a wide variety of background, and I think that speaks for itself.
One thing the legislation, I haven’t got it in front of me, doesn’t say, but I’m pretty sure I’m right about what I’m about to say, doesn’t mention science and data. And so I think I would encourage – by the way, I encourage this with boards as well – that there needs to be some science, some respect for science, and scientific expertise at the top of the house who understand data, technology, who have some sympathy for the subject. That’s just a personal view.
Tom Connell: You’ve been generous with your time. Good luck for the final six months. I’ll be keeping an eye on the website. Ladies and gentlemen, please thank Joe Longo.
