The Government has introduced legislation into Parliament that will reform the way financial markets in Australia are supervised.

The Corporations Amendment (Financial Market Supervision) Bill 2010 contains three key measures:

•The Bill removes the obligation on Australian market licensees to supervise their markets.
•The Bill provides ASIC with the function of supervising domestic Australian market licensees.
•The Bill provides ASIC with additional powers, including the power to make rules with respect to trading on such markets and additional powers to enforce such rules.

Following public consultation, a number of changes have been made to the Bill, including:

•the maximum penalty for a breach of a market integrity rule for either an individual or a corporation has been reduced to $1 million (previously announced as $5 million); and
•the maximum pecuniary penalty payable when entering into an arrangement with ASIC to avoid civil proceedings has been lowered from 4/5th of the maximum a court can order to 3/5th of the maximum a court can order.

UPDATE 11 March 2010: Bill passed by both Houses
Received assent on 25 March 2010