SYDNEY, April 23 — Australia's competition watchdog today supported massive increases in financial penalties for companies caught doing the wrong thing, after widespread misconduct was exposed by an ongoing inquiry into the financial sector.
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Chairman Rod Sims said the government was correct to propose penalties of up to 10 per cent of turnover, potentially running into hundreds of millions of dollars.
“The penalties we're getting these days on both competition and consumer matters are tens of millions. We need penalties in the hundreds of millions,” he told state broadcaster the ABC.
“The key bit of the penalty is 10 per cent of the turnover — that's the change we've got to make in Australia in relation to not only competition but also consumer penalties so that company boards really sit up and take notice ... and don't just treat it as a cost of doing business.”
His comments came after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull admitted he had been wrong to oppose the establishment of the independent judicial inquiry into the scandal-ridden financial sector, whose daily revelations of wrongdoing have shocked the country in recent weeks.
“Politically, all of the commentators are right when they say we would have been right to establish one earlier,” Turnbull said during a visit to Germany, according to the ABC.
The first three weeks of public hearings at the inquiry have been a political embarrassment for the government and a publicity disaster for Australia's major lenders and AMP Ltd , the country's largest listed wealth manager.
