The Square Orange

Creating Resilient Organisations

The following appears in "Implementing an Effective Change Management Strategy" by Neryl East, MA, PhD, published by the Ark Group in association with Inside Knowledge.

While it might be admirable for organisations to strive to be resilient, change and strategic management specialist Teik Oh says resilience is not the end of the journey. Resilience is an element that needs to be embedded in the culture of the business.

He believes that can only be achieved if the organisation and its leadership demonstrate some fundamental behaviour that point to resilience.

Resilience is not only important in the hard times or during change. It must also be demonstrated when business is going well. That can be a challenge for many leaders, who Oh says are generally suited to only one style of an economy.

Many perform well when the economy is also doing well. Other leaders rise to the challenge when the economy does badly; Oh points out that it is relatively easy to think of great leaders who have turned companies around. However, they may not have been so successful when the business was back on track.

Oh says resilience needs to be a constant, rather than something that is brought in with change management. "If you can bring in that cultural resilience over time, the next time a crisis happens, hopefully you will react accordingly," he says.

He cites the writing of Harvard Business Review senior editor Diane L. Coutu [http://hbr.org/2002/05/how-resilience-works/ib], who describes three key attitudes for resilient behaviour:

• To be able to face the truth without any ego
• To actually see the grand vision – the meaning and purpose of the organisation
• To be able to react quickly with whatever is at hand

In relation to the first point, Oh says leaders who have risen to the fore during good times are not always able to instil in their organisation the need to respond to a changing environment. Leaders who have an overly optimistic nature risk being blinded to the truth, and to believing that "we'll be right, we'll just keep doing what we're doing."

"People are looking at the positives, but do have to realise when things have changed," he says. "You do have to face the possibilities. Ego has a great part to do with it. You have to have a clear sense of your own ego so you don’t rest on your laurels. It's like being able to be on the dance floor at the same time that you are in the wings watching yourself dancing."

Oh says a resilient organisation is one in which the culture allows people to honestly challenge each other. If they are able to do that within the organisational hierarchy, they will have a culture that allows the truth to be faced. Otherwise the culture is very dependent on the leader, and workers are likely to ask questions among themselves such as, “if it’s so good, why is this happening?” rather than openly questioning.

Oh believes being resilient does not necessarily come down to personality, and is something that can be learned.  It also reaches far beyond organisational reporting systems.

"An organisation can have good systems for monitoring its environment, and they display the truth, such as an accounting system showing a loss," Oh says. "But the ability to challenge opinions adds another layer. If you bring forward that you have made a loss but everyone is very supportive and sympathetic, you try to soothe the pain and that’s when you start to get into trouble. You need that open and honest communication, with people being able to question why it’s happening, how long will it last. It's about being prepared to face the tough questions and to ask them. Or is the organisation in hiding?"

Regarding Coutu’s second point, Oh is a strong believer in setting an organisational vision that is empowering and subscribed to by everyone. "If you’re going to shake up an organisation, you need to tell them what the whole horizon looks like," he says.

"A non-resilient organisation lacks that longer term vision, and they attack current problems. One result of that is that the internal value systems change. For example, total customer service might have been a value, but if things go wrong, an organisation might sacrifice parts of its customer service system to save costs. If you’re doing that, you’re lost. Resilience has value systems that just don’t change.  If your values are right, they’re right in every situation. So, using the customer service example, even if the firm was losing money a resilient organisation would not use change management practices to reduce its customer service. You’ve got to find your savings elsewhere."

Oh believes many organisations still lack that clear vision. "They have a vision statement, but it's not quantifiable," he says. "Often it's just a flag they fly, without any real connection to the outcome and operations of the business."

Clarity of vision has to come from management. "The organisation needs to be clear on what each sentence or paragraph means, and it must be linked to the Key Performance Indicators of the organisation," Oh says. "It's effective to combine the vision statement with something like a balanced score card; 'When we’ve achieved our vision, what will our customers say about us? If we achieve it, what will our stakeholders think about it?' You do that with people, and with processes. That way, someone down the line totally understands the big picture."

Oh uses an example of NASA in the 1960s when the space agency was first trying to land a man on the moon. "A study group went around and talked to all the NASA employees, including the cleaners, and asked them if they had a boring job. They all said they had a fantastic job because they were helping to send a man to the moon!"

He says Coutu's third point, to some extent, comes from the first two. An organisation that is true to its values and vision but is also able to diagnose problems with honesty, is able to react quickly and come up with innovative solutions. When rapid change is needed, an organisation can only react with the resources it has at the time.

"I think this is why many organisations don’t perform well," he says. "They wait months before anything happens."

"This element needs a culture of empowerment, so that the person who sees the problem feels empowered to bring it up. The way it filters down to the people on the ground depends on the leader's ability to totally explain the vision."

Oh likens the power of strong leadership in a resilient organisation to the scene depicted in a recent advertisement for logistics and delivery company UPS, in which a group of van drivers are following a UPS driver through a jungle, complete with bridge washaways and other obstacles. They follow because they know the UPS van will get through.

He says those strong qualities do not necessarily have to be stated. "For example, with the guiding principles or vision, the organisation may not say 'we have a clear vision', but people just act in a certain way from knowing what the bosses would do, and feel empowered to do so. They don’t say ‘oh, we have a strong values system’ but the way they act says that they do."

"And it's not necessarily the leader driving those organisations. I worked with one business with an extremely charismatic leader. In front of a group of people he could talk about where the company was going, but then organisationally he lacked the kind of operational structure to translate that into outcomes. People were inefficient because there wasn’t that central understanding of those values. They didn't react quickly with what was at hand."

Oh believes that to develop a resilient culture, an organisation needs to go back to basics. "They need to ask where they're going," he says. "They need to know 'who have we got on the bus? Are they on the right seats? What kinds of processes are we using, and do these support looking at the truth? Are they aligned to the vision and values, and do these support or reward people who take those first two things and create an innovative approach?"

He reiterates that it is much harder for an organisation to implement cultural change when business is going well. "I have yet to see a client come to me and say 'everything is OK but we need to change'. It’s usually in the middle of something," he points out. "You read about great leaders and how, despite everything being OK, they keep changing. You might go too far, though. If you don’t have an impetus for change, what are you changing to?"

The good times, however, are the ideal period to begin developing resilient characteristics in the organisation's culture "In the bad times, it becomes less likely that you’ll invite long term change," Oh says. "All your attention is fixed on your short term problem."

He says "resilience" has now been taken up as a catch phrase, in much the same way that "change management" was a hot topic in the recent past. He does not see them as separate topics. "You just need to build a good organisation, and that, surely is a resilient one."

"There is a danger that if you think resilience is the next nice thing, you will build a resilient organisation separate from all the other things that create a good organisation. You have to see resilience as one of the characteristics of a good organisation. And that gets back to the leadership team."

Oh says that even a few years on from the Global Financial Crisis, the jury is still out on which organisations have demonstrated that they are truly resilient. "There are a lot of things that muddy the water, like the government putting money into organisations," he says. "They may well have been funded out of trouble. Where organisations have clearly come out the other end, perhaps unaided, I think you’ll find they already had strong corporate cultures, which would then have displayed those three resilient attitudes. They survived, not because they were resilient, but because they were already strong corporate cultures with good leadership."

"That's a lesson for any organisation. You don't need an initiative to create resilience. You want to change your company to the type of structure and culture you want, and in that you’re creating resilience."

Structuring Australian Indigenous Business Groups

Australian Indigenous enterprises can be categorised into three main categories:-

1. Those owned and operated by Indigenous individuals or “nuclear” families where profits may be distributed to individuals;
2. Those owned and operated by Indigenous “communities” or larger Indigenous cultural family groups that are operated for the benefit of the whole group and do not result in distributions of profit to individuals; and
3. Those owned and operated by Indigenous corporate and service entities and Native Title Prescribed Bodies Corporate where profits may be distributed back to that particular corporation or service entity or its constituent corporate members such as the previously mentioned “communities”.

The second and third categories may be described as “social enterprises” or “social ventures” whether there is an intention to make a profit as a business, or whether the enterprise is a not-for-profit community service-delivery organisation.

This discussion deals with the structuring of the second and third categories. The first category is clearly a private individual business model and structuring for that category will depend on normal commercial considerations as normally applying to small business, including the application of tax.

The second and third categories are more like a combination of community organisations (that happen to run a business)and  public companies where the structural considerations, apart from any cultural considerations, need to consider the possibility of structuring to take advantage of tax concessions, community involvement, or at least interest in the transparency of governance, the possibility of community interest and possibly interference in management, as well as the more usual concerns of continuity, risk management and business succession, particularly as applying to a large corporate group. Generally these structures are constituted as PBI’s or Public Benevolent Institutions where profits may not be distributed to individuals but are used for the benefit of a group of people.

In our work over twenty years we find that the common issues tend to be:-

• Multiple types of business may be operated across various industries;
• Non-linear growth, where the early years may concentrate on one business and then multiple businesses may suddenly emerge as experience an opportunity reveal themselves;
• The need to funnel profits back to the benefit of the “community for “it” to deal with in accordance with its own goals;
• The probability of employing multiple non-Indigenous or at least “not-connected-to-central-organisation” managers for some or all of the different business lines;
• The need for transparent governance through the group, including clear delineation of management responsibilities;
• The need to encourage and allow participation by community members in key roles, and to mentor community members into management roles;
• The need to protect the central community or organisation and its assets from business failure of an inter-related business;
• The need to build in partnerships and joint ventures with others, whether part of the central group or otherwise;
• The possibility of “hiving off” some of the business elements in future.

In almost all cases we have had experience of, there is a central issue surrounding “ownership” and what that entails, as compared to the legal sense of ownership.

Members of the central community or organisation which owns a business entity do not always understand the Westminster and Common Law issues around the fact that it is the organisation that owns the entity and not themselves as individuals. This misunderstanding is compounded when businesses are placed in separate multiple entities that may have a cascading ownership structure and in such cases the “community” often become frustrated that they are unable to influence the management of an entity at the bottom of the structure.  

In our experience, whatever structures are provided, education and training about this issue is required at the beginning, and throughout the life of the business, alongside training in governance so that those members can be trained to make their voices heard “appropriately” at the meetings of the central organisation rather than those of subsidiary entities.

As a result of our experience, we believe the central principles surrounding any structuring exercise are:-

• Ensuring the businesses are in appropriate and separate entities themselves, so as to “quarantine” effects of any business failure;
• That these separate businesses are owned directly by the central organisation and not by any “trustees” or “nominee shareholders”;
• That where income tax needs to be paid, to register accordingly;
• That there should be a central “Charter” of how Boards of subsidiary entities need to be comprised and how they need to conduct themselves in relation to the central Board;
• That any managers be required to sign employment contracts that include reporting responsibilities to their Boards, which are all of a similar template through the group.

The following is a “template” of a group structure that should be agreed to up front by the central Board so that as any new business activities are considered, the strategy for incorporation and operation is already set.

The Enterprise Holding Entity (“EHE”) should be owned 100% by the Central Organisation (not by members of the Central Organisation as individuals or trustees) so that there is a clearly defined ownership by the larger group and clear profit flows.

The EHE is interposed between the Central Organisation and the entities actually operating businesses so that:-

• There are clearly separate responsibilities of the two different Boards, one of responsibility for all aspects of the central organisation including its enterprises, the other of being solely responsible for enterprise activity;
• There is an interposed “second line of defence” in the case of any business failure and insolvency down the line;
• Accumulated profits can “rest” at this level so that part can be distributed up the line to the central organisation and part can be retained for further enterprise investment, the ratio to be decided as circumstances demand.

As businesses start, they are incorporated into subsidiary entities (herein noted as #1, #2, etc) so that:-

• Each separate business is quarantined from others (and EHE) as well as the central organisation in the event of business failure and liquidation – it is therefore important that cross-guarantees and collateral should not be given;
• Each business entity can have a Board that (perhaps smaller) concentrates only on its responsibility of running that single business and is answerable to the EHE Board for performance;
• Each business can have distinctly separate staff and employment contracts etc as may be necessary if they are in markedly different industries;
• Each entity can be funded separately as required;
• Each entity can be “hived off”, sold, closed, expanded, or partnered/joint ventured with an outside partner/investor without allowing that outside party into the affairs of any other business.

Land assets of the central organisation can sometimes be held in a totally separate non-trading entity. This might be applicable for example in the case of any freehold land that is considered part of the central “estate” that may never be sold. In this case, we believe the best structure is to create a “sister” entity to the Central Organisation but not connected by any ownership, where that land holding entity is owned by all the members in the same way that the Central Organisation is “owned” by the members. There should be no connection to EHE. This sometimes causes issues where the Central Organisation needs to borrow money to fund enterprise as some of this land may be required as security. This needs to be looked at separately should the need arise.

The types of entity that EHE and its subsidiaries should be constituted as, will depend on a case by case review of circumstances. Apart from incorporation as an Aboriginal Corporation under the Corporations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) Act 2006 – which is often the most appropriate structure for the central organisation – the EHE and subsidiaries may be incorporated as companies limited by guarantee, private proprietary companies, discretionary and unit trusts. Each should suit the requirement for its particular business, position and purpose within the group

Needless to say, any trusts created as part of these structures will need to have separate corporate trustees. This is to ensure control by the EHE is channelled through a Board of Directors in the subsidiary entities, and to provide the appropriate transparency.

The ability of each entity, including the EHE itself, to obtain tax concessions ranging from income tax concessions to deductible gift recipient status to concessional Fringe Benefits Tax status will have to be examined on a case by case basis.

Clearly, a corporate structure consisting of an EHE and multiple subsidiaries under a central organisation could be a recipe for disaster in terms of control and strategic direction. Therefore it is important that before these entities are created, a “Charter” be agreed upon so that as these entities are incorporated, as far as the law allows, the central agreements of the “Charter” are included in the various constituent documents or Constitutions.

 

We believe the following should be included:-

• The constituency of the EHE Board, nominating stated officers of the central organisation Board to the EHE Board, the need of “independent” members, the number and terms of Board members, etc;
• The constituency of the subsidiary Boards, for example that the subsidiary Boards must include x number of members who are also members of the EHE Board, that there are restrictions to the number of Boards one individual may sit on, etc;
• Rules about Chairmanship for example no single individual can be Chair of more than 2 Boards, and Chair of central organisation may not be Chair of any enterprise Board, etc;
• The requirement for all Board members to attend and keep up to date with Governance and Finance Training within a set time-frame of membership;
• The requirement for the subsidiary Boards to report using prescribed template  formats to the EHE Board at set times;
• A minimum ratio of dividends or profit distribution be written into the constitution, subject to waiver by the EHE or central organisation due to the need to establish new businesses or fund capital spending;
• The requirement for Boards to be measured under agreed Performance Measures; and
• The removal of Board members for non-performance.

While it is important that each separate entity be allowed to run their business in the way they see fit, nevertheless, it is equally important that the strategic direction and indeed the day to day operation of these businesses follow the strategic direction set by the central organisation through the EHE, and that common values are being followed. The “Charter” by which the separate Boards operate will help in this.

Further, without limiting the independence of the different business units, we believe that the contracts of the business unit managers need to follow a common template so that all managers employed in the structure follow common goals and measurements. This employment contract template should also specifically spell out reporting and strategic responsibilities such as:-

• They have to prepare Business Plans with Financial Projections using standard templates at the beginning of each year;
• Their Business Plans and models of operation need to follow the general strategic direction and the values set by the central organisation through the EHE;
• They are to provide reports following a group template at set times which will report on matters such as actual to budget and explanations of variances, human resources issues, marketing and business opportunities, and so on;
• Their performance will be measured against agreed Performance Measures.

There could be any number of objectives to be achieved by the central organisation in starting enterprises, ranging from funding its community or charitable activities, increasing economic opportunity for individual members, and so on. It is important to note however that in our opinion, while the EHE and subsidiary businesses should subscribe to the values of the central organisation and operate within its Indigenous culture as well as its corporate culture, they do not have objectives of being a community organisation nor of a charity. In other words they need to be run like businesses (albeit Indigenous businesses that subscribe to Indigenous community culture) that have the objectives of growing the business and investment funds, and making a profit.

As the profits are distributed, what the central organisation does with that profit is outside the scope of the EHE structure and subsidiary Boards and management should not presume to dictate what happens up the line.

Choosing, Implementing and Cascading Performance Measures

Implementing Performance Measures

Determining what to measure can take considerable effort, but it will probably be less than one-third of the total effort required to implement an efficient and effective measurement system. Data collection and processing systems will have to be implemented to produce the measures; everyone will have to be trained in using the systems and measures; and as the measures are used, some problems are sure to be identified that will require changes to the system.

 

Perhaps the greatest challenge faced when implementing performance measurement systems is changing an organisation’s culture. Using performance measures requires managers and employees to change the way they think and act. For most people, this is relatively easy, but for some, changing old beliefs and habits is very difficult.

 

Overcoming such problems requires strong leadership to provide appropriate direction and support. The best measurement system in the world will yield few benefits if the right knowledge, skills, abilities, and values are not developed in a company. An organisation doesn’t just interface with a measurement system; it is part of the system.

 

Developing and implementing effective measurement systems requires leadership, commitment, and hard work. Some investment is required, but it is small relative to the key benefits of a well-designed and implemented measurement system:

· The ability to determine if sales and profit problems are caused by strategies, operations, or both;

· Early identification of problems and opportunities;

· Increased productivity, quality, and customer service;

· A clear understanding of what drives financial and operational performance so resources can be allocated to the areas of greatest return; and

· A cohesive organisation working toward common goals.

 

Cascading Performance Measures

 

Corporate level measures are very important, but they aren’t going to have much impact unless they are cascaded all the way down to front-line employees. The case for cascading is simple: Do you want 10% of your employees working toward company objectives or 100%?

 

With some exceptions, such as market share, what you measure at the top is what must be measured at all levels. However, the specific measures will change with every functional and organisational level because managers doing different jobs need different information to make different decisions.

 

The same methodologies used to develop measures at the corporate level can be used to cascade the measures down to front-line managers, supervisors, and employees. However, as you go down the organisation chart, the focus is on operations or processes. Strategy is incorporated into operational measures by giving more weight to the measures that are strategically important. This communicates strategy to all employees by translating it into operational terms – at the individual level.

 

Key Questions to be answered by Performance Measurement Systems

 

No matter what approach you use to develop performance measures, bear in mind that the objective is not to have a measurement system in itself, but to empower business improvement, and to do so, to enable managers at all levels to answer ten key questions:-

 

1. Are we satisfying our customers?

2. Are we satisfying our shareholders?

3. Are we satisfying our other stakeholders?

4. What is happening to our customer base?

5. Is our company strategy working?

6. Are our individual strategies being properly executed?

7. Are we serving our customers and stakeholders effectively?

8. Are we operating efficiently?

9. Are stakeholders contributing what they should?

10.  Are we developing the abilities we need to  execute our strategies?

 

If all of your managers can readily answer those questions about their areas of responsibility and support their answers with objective numbers, your company has the performance measures it needs. If they can’t, some of the "good" decisions they are making are undoubtedly not very effective - and they may even be harmful.

Federal Budget - 2009

Personal Taxation

Foreign employment income

The Government has announced changes to the tax treatment of foreign employment income.

Under the proposed measures, foreign employment income will generally be taxable, but taxpayers will be entitled to a tax offset for foreign tax paid on the foreign employment income.

The proposed measures will take effect from 1 July 2009

Employee share schemes

The Government has announced that all discounts on shares and options provided under an employee share scheme, whether qualifying or non-qualifying, will be assessed in the income year in which they are acquired. That is, employees will no longer be able to elect to defer taxation on their discount to a later time.

The Government will also limit access to the $1,000 upfront tax exemption to employees with an adjusted taxable income of less than $60,000.

These measures will apply to shares and options acquired after 7.30 pm AEST on 12 May 2009.

Private health insurance rebate

The Government announced that high income earners will receive a reduction in their private health insurance rebate and face an increase in Medicare levy surcharge
should they opt out of their health cover.

From 1 July 2010, the Government will introduce three new ‘Private Health Insurance Tiers’ for high income earners:

·    Tier 1: for singles earning more than $75,001 (couples/families $150,001), the rebate will be 20% for those up to 65 years (25% for those over 65, and 30% for those over 70 years). The Medicare levy surcharge for avoiding private health insurance will remain at 1%.

·    Tier 2: for singles earning more than $90,001 (couples/families $180,001), the rebate will be 10%, for those up to 65 years (15% for those over 65, and 20% for those over 70 years). The surcharge for avoiding private health insurance will be increased to 1.25%.

·    Tier 3: for singles earning more than $120,001 (couples/families $240,001), no rebate will be provided. The surcharge for avoiding private health insurance will be increased to 1.5%.

 

 

Low and middle-income earners are not affected by the proposed changes.

Seniors Health Card

The Government said that it will not include gross income from superannuation income streams from a taxed source when determining an individual’s eligibility for the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card, a measure which was due to come into effect on 1 July 2009.

However, the Government will proceed to include income that is salary sacrificed to superannuation in the income assessment, which will take effect from 1 July 2009.

Medicare levy low-income thresholds

The Government has released the Medicare levy low-income thresholds for the 2008/09 income year. The threshold will increase for singles to $17,794 and to $30,025 for individuals who are members of a family.

The additional amount of threshold for each dependent child or student will also be increased to $2,757.

The Medicare levy low-income threshold for pensioners below Age Pension age will also be increased from 1 July 2008 to $25,299.

Seniors Supplement for self-funded retirees

The Government will provide a Seniors Supplement from 20 September 2009.

The Supplement will be available to self-funded retirees who are eligible for the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card or the Department of Veterans’ Affairs Gold Card with current Seniors Concession Allowance. It incorporates existing payments of Seniors Concession Allowance and the higher rate of Telephone Allowance.

The Seniors Supplement will be $790.40 a year for singles and $1,190.80 a year for couples combined. Payments will be made quarterly.

Business Taxation

Small Business and General Business Tax Break

The Government has announced the one-off bonus tax deduction available to small businesses under the Small Business and General Business Tax Break will increase to 50%, where a small business acquires an eligible asset between 13 December 2008 and 31 December 2009, and the asset is installed or ready for use by 31 December 2010.

Repeal of unlimited amendment periods

The Government announced that it will repeal certain provisions in the income tax laws that currently provide the Commissioner with an unlimited period in which to amend an item in a taxpayer’s income tax return.

The Government stated that the amendments will take effect from the date of Royal Assent of the relevant enabling legislation.

Assets and deemed dividend rules

The Government will extend the deemed dividend rules to payments by way of a licence or right to use real property and chattels, such as cars, boats and real estate.

This measure will reduce the opportunities for private companies to allow their shareholders or associates to use company assets for free, or at less than their arm’s length value, without paying tax.

It is proposed this measure will apply from the 2009/10 income year.

Use of non-commercial losses restricted

The Government will tighten the application of the rules on the use of non-commercial losses to prevent high-income individuals from offsetting excess deductions from non-commercial business activities against salary and other income.

From 1 July 2009, taxpayers with an adjusted taxable income of over $250,000 will only be able to deduct expenses from non-commercial business activities against the income from those activities. Any excess deductions will be quarantined to the business activity.

Taxpayers will still be able to apply to the Commissioner for relief from the rules if there are exceptional circumstances, or because the nature of the activities means that a taxpayer is temporarily carrying on an uncommercial business but the activities they are undertaking are nonetheless independently assessed as commercially viable.

Superannuation Measures

Changes to concessional contributions cap

The Government will cut the superannuation concessional contributions cap to $25,000 per annum (down from $50,000 per annum) from 1 July 2009.

The transitional concessional contributions cap, which applies until the 2011/12 income year, for individuals aged 50 to 74, will be reduced to $50,000 per annum (down from $100,000 per annum).

From 1 July 2012, the concessional contributions cap for those aged 50 and over will revert to the lower $25,000 cap (or applicable indexed amount at that time).

The Government has not amended the non-concessional contributions cap.

Superannuation co-contribution

The Government has announced that it will temporarily reduce the superannuation government co-contribution matching rate that is payable on eligible personal superannuation contributions, with effect from 1 July 2009.

The temporary matching rates as proposed are:

·    for the 2009/10, 2010/11 and 2011/12 income years, $1 for each dollar of contribution, up to a maximum of $1,000 per annum;

·    for the 2012/13 and 2013/14 income years, the rate is $1.25 for each dollar of contribution, up to a maximum of $1,250 per annum; and

·    for 2014/15 and later income years, the rate is $1.50 for each dollar of contribution, up to a maximum of $1,500 per annum.

Reduction in pension drawdown

The Government will extend its decision to reduce by 50% the minimum annual payment amounts for account-based pensions for the 2009/10 income year. That is, self-funded retirees will only have to draw down half of the minimum amounts from their account-based pensions for 2009/10.

Other Measures

Increase in ASIC fees

In the 2009/10 Federal Budget, the Government stated that it will index fees and charges collected by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to the Consumer Price Index from the 2010/11 income year