The Australian government has bowed to public pressure and announced it would drop its plans to sell off the ASIC corporate database.
The government was put under pressure by journalists and the activist organisation GetUp. A public petition was also launched to garner support for keeping the database.
Daney Faddoul, economic fairness campaigner at GetUp, welcomed the backdown, but warned that the government had to go further and make ASIC’s data free if it was serious about exposing shady corporate behaviour.
Accessing just one set of company records costs $38, among the highest access fees in the world.
{loadposition sam08}“Journalists, academics, and the public at large opposed this sale. The database is used to hold dodgy corporates to account and ensure that companies are paying their fair share of tax," said Faddoul.
“Business filings to ASIC shouldn’t be behind closed doors. We all benefit when corporations are held to the highest level of scrutiny.
“A total of 80,306 GetUp members signed a petition calling out the Turnbull government for their harebrained scheme to sell it off, 84 journalists from across print and electronic media wrote an open letter to Malcolm Turnbull, and workers from the ASIC database warned of the devastating impact a sale would have on corporate scrutiny."
ASIC workers had also joined the protest in order to defend local jobs.
Faddoul said: “The hundreds of people working at the ASIC corporate database in the struggling La Trobe valley now know that their jobs are safe and so is the data that is integral to investigating corporate affairs.
“The government must now take the next step in making corporate business behaviour transparent. Australia has some of the highest fees in the world to access corporate data, and journalists regularly run out of money when investigating corporate wrongdoing.
“In countries like New Zealand and the US, this data is free. At a whopping $38 a pop, the government is still holding this information ransom to those that can afford it.
“Mr Turnbull, if there really is nothing to hide make the corporate data free for us all to see.
“With the sale DOA, it won’t be happy holidays for dodgy corporate behaviour. This shows what can be won through people power – even on an issue as wonky as the ASIC corporate database,” said Faddoul.