[Wombat]

The lament of the elderly regarding the young: "If they only knew, if we only could" one of the perks of our aged Board of Directors was the necessity of dealing with Corporate Governance matters which occasionally became quite titillating for the old dears when it had to do with Managers laying hands on staff (with or without permission) and the formation of (Ahem) liaisons between staff members of any sex encompassing "power imbalances". I remember when Big Bertha, our marketing manager, got caught with Charlie the mailroom boy in the photocopier room but that is not for tender ears.

Most of Governance is about risk management. A large chunk of that is to ensure that the staff don't run off with the money or the goods nor open world war three with the ATO. Our Auditors and Directors were very concerned by what they termed "The separation of powers" to ensure that didn't happen.

In the corporate world we did most of that by "separation of powers" also called separation of duties, the person who orders goods isn't the same person who writes the cheques to pay for them. Prisons are full of those whose employers ignored this temptation.:

"Separation of duty, as a security principle, has as its primary objective the prevention of fraud and errors. This objective is achieved by disseminating the tasks and associated privileges for a specific business process among multiple users."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_duties

Now imagine my surprise when i saw the latest CASA organisation chart. Seven good and true managers reporting to Ms. Spence - that's good - span of control and all that textbook stuff, no more than seven, yes, big tick, but then I noticed something our auditors and Directors would have jibed at;

The functions of litigation, investigations, enforcement AND advisory and drafting of the regulations are all under the control of the Executive Manager Legal, International and Regulatory. Our Directors would have choked on their foie gras over that.

Imagine, I get to write the regulation, investigate you to see if you are complying with the finer points of my requirements, decide wether your compliance with my ukase was sufficiently to my liking, or not, then arrange for your punishment to suit my whim on that day and begin the process of punishing you. All without so much as rising from my office chair.

Pardon the pun but this won't fly in the corporate world at all. Not a hope. Those powers would be spread between at least three managers. Which begs the question; is CASA so poor that it can't afford the staff to separate those roles? I think we should take up a collection to pay for that.