Should ASIC personnel get bonuses?
Unlike many other people employed under the Australian Public Service Act, employees of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) have access to a bonus scheme.
The regulator has confirmed to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services that it maintains a bonus scheme for staff, something which West Australian Labor Party MP, Matt Keogh, said he had never previously observed with respect to public service employees.
Explaining the arrangement, ASIC commissioner John Price told Keogh that it was an arrangement which had existed within the regulator for as long as he had been with ASIC, which was close to 20 years, prompting the Labor member to ask, “What then separates ASIC from every other public servant?”
Price said the bonuses ranged from three per cent through to around 15 per cent of average salary and had always been in place and were a feature of ASIC for as long as he could remember.
Price went on to explain to Keogh that many of the skills required of ASIC staff were akin to those required in the business world, while ASIC chairman James Shipton described it as “a good program of incentivising, motivating and reward good performance”.
ASIC senior executive leader, Warren Day, suggested to Keogh that ASIC was not alone in providing bonuses to public servants and that such arrangements had existed within the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) when he had worked there in the past.
“At a philosophical level, there is some benefit in having a bonus scheme to incentivise people towards good performance and good behaviours,” Shipton said. “I suppose that’s one of the reasons why the scheme at ASIC has persisted over a long period of time.”
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