Earlier this week, the Senate Economics Committee recommended in favour of a government bill to scrap CAMAC and subsume its functions into the Treasury and ASIC.
However, speaking to InvestorDaily’s sister title Lawyers Weekly, ACLA chief executive Trish Hyde said that CAMAC is an important independent body crucial to business reform.
Ms Hyde said it was imperative that corporate in-house counsel have a “forum to view law reform through the lens of business practicality”.
The comments from ACLA follow similar criticism from the Governance Institute of Australia, which has publicly argued against the abolition of CAMAC.
“The vast majority of the business and legal community is committed to saving CAMAC and to restoring all its functions,” said Governance Institute national director, policy and publishing, Judith Fox.
Ms Fox claimed that 90 per cent of submissions to the inquiry supported CAMAC’s retention.
“Without a body like CAMAC, Australia runs the risk of becoming hobbled by haphazard, politically motivated and poorly designed corporate law reforms, which could impede our financial markets, at great cost to our economy,” Ms Fox argued.
“The fact that the business community came out so strongly in favour of the body speaks for itself.”
