If the Abbott Government is serious about letting Crowd Sourced Equity Funding occur in Australia it needs to do more than just pat itself on the back, Shadow Treasury Parliamentary Secretary Ed Husic said today.
The Abbott Governments Budget Speech made a lot of noise about money being set aside to help introduce Crowd Source Equity Funding (CSEF), Mr Husic said.
The cold reality is even the Abbott Government admits it will be well into this year before any draft laws supporting CSEF are even introduced into the Parliament.
And its been well over a year since the Abbott Government received an independent report outlining how CSEF could work in Australia.
Whats been announced in the Budget is a response to one recommendation made in this report which called on the Australian Securities and Investment Commission to develop some standardised documents to help guide investors in seeking CSEF funding.
Its good that the Budget has set some money aside for this, but overall were still a long way off from having a solid CSEF framework in place.
Again, we call on the Abbott Government to bring forward the plans to introduce crowdsourced equity funding into Australia, and we restate our genuine commitment to work constructively with them to achieve this.
Mr Husic also indicated concern about the way the Budget allocated funding to the establishment of CSEF.
The title for the crowdsource funding allocation suggests that the money is being put aside for the introduction of a system that would benefit public companies only. If this is a simple oversight, thats easily corrected.
But if it is not, serious questions have to be asked about what type of regulatory framework is going to be introduced by the Abbott Government.
WEDNESDAY 13 MAY 2015
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