By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
Some bad news out of the Federal Court for anybody who still believes that fabulous wealth is just there for the taking in the cryptocurrency sector.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission suffered a wee setback in its mission to bring law and order to the wild crypto frontier when Justice Ian Jackman – yes, the brother of Hollywood royalty Hugh Jackman – ruled that while the Charlie Karaboga-led crypto outfit Block Earner operated its Earner product without a financial services licence when it should have had one, the court would not impose the fines sought by the corporate watchdog over the matter.
It’s a handy result for Karaboga and co; ASIC wanted a fine of $350,000 levied on Block Earner but Jackman found the firm made genuine attempts to ensure it was complying with financial services laws when it launched Earner.
And those fabled crypto riches? Well Karaboga told the court, and he wasn’t challenged on this, that in the nine months between March and October 2022, Earner’s profits were a meagre $21,309 – and $14,974 of that was fees charged for converting dollars to crypto or crypto back to dollars.
Hardly what you’d call a nice little earner.
But Block Earner’s head of business James Coombes pointed out on Tuesday that Earner was designed to be a high volume, low margin product with a business plan that never got the chance to fully develop. So we can never tell if those riches were just over the horizon.
In more good legal news for Block Earner, Jackman slapped ASIC with what must be a hefty costs order over an “inaccurate” media release the regulator published in February that indicated, incorrectly, that the firm continued to act outside the law, 13 months after Earner was shut down.
ASIC said on Monday that it was reviewing the decision.
LYCRA LAD
Liberal Senator Jane Hume and ASIC boss Joe Longo have emerged as unlikely gym buddiesCredit: John Shakespeare
The Senate estimates season has failed dismally – so far at least – to bring the jollity that we usually hope for out of Parliament House at this time of year.
So CBD salutes Liberal senator Jane Hume for brightening up the Canberra winter gloom just a touch on Tuesday morning as she welcomed Australian Securities and Investments Commission chairman Joe Longo – Hume’s sort-of gym buddy, it turns out – to the day’s proceedings.
“I feel this is very awkward – every time I see Mr Longo now, it seems to be at the gym on Saturday mornings, so I apologise for the Lycra,” the Victorian senator said.
“Less worthy men have seen me in far less.”
Hume then took a long pause in which she appeared to have even shocked herself as the room broke up around her, before she continued.
“Sorry, I forgot myself for a moment. I’m going to ask some questions about something serious now.”
Longo, for his part, was admirably determined that the committee should be under no misapprehension over his choice of activewear – it says a lot about a person, in CBD’s view – as one of Hume’s fellow senators questioned which of the two gym buddies was wearing the Lycra.
“I can reassure the committee that I will never be seen in Lycra,” the ASIC chairman insisted.
Never say never, Joe.
STOP THE LEAKS
Looks like the Liberal Party’s NSW division is trying, belatedly, to take a strong stand against leaking.
Earlier this year, a trove of papers from the party’s state executive meetings, including information on the division’s finances and its ongoing business relationship with departed state director Chris Stone, fell off a truck and happened to land in the laps of CBD, among others.
Funnily enough, the party wasn’t too impressed. At last month’s state executive meeting, documents were watermarked with reminders that they were confidential and financial results were displayed on a PowerPoint presentation, rather than handed out to members of the body which tries to keep the party running.
NURSING A GRUDGE
The Australian Council of Trade Unions’ triennial conference in Adelaide this week should be a cordial celebration of sibling-hood and solidarity – what with comrade Anthony Albanese in the Lodge. But as is so often in the world of organised labour, there is tension just below the surface.
In attendance will be the Victorian branch of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation whose rank-and-file remains in open revolt not only against Jacinta Allan’s state Labor government but in defiance of the leadership of Lisa Fitzpatrick over a pay deal she nutted-out with the government, which was spectacularly rejected by the membership. Delegates are also displeased with the Albanese government over the lack of action over the right to strike.
What we’re about to impart might not help matters.
It has been pointed out to CBD that Yvette Nash, veteran Labor staffer who acted as chief of staff to Bill Shorten before the ill-fated 2019 federal election and who now serves as CoS to ACTU secretary Sally McManus once wrote to this very masthead, invoking the name of Florence Nightingale and opining that the heroine of Britain’s Crimean War – another debacle – would “be horrified” at the sight of nurses going out on strike.
“Nurses should live up to the traditions established by Florence, who worked hard to make nursing a respectable occupation,” Nash wrote.
Now in fairness, this was 1986, and Nash was just 11 years old. Memories are long in the union movement.
On Tuesday, Nash told us she’d mellowed with age.
“I was 11. I still believed in Santa,” she said.
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