Amid a proliferation of royal commissions into sectors ridden with transgression, there are calls for another royal commission to materialise around the failure of our regulators.

From the inquiry into institutional responses to child sexual abuse to the upcoming scrutiny set to be cast on the aged-care sector, we seem to be in commission season.  It’s clear regulators are  consistently failing in their duties across the board. In fact it seems regulators, who have been charged with the task of safeguarding us from exploitation, have wound up protecting and advocating for those who do the exploiting.

The Australia Institute’s Richard Denniss says this has happened courtesy of neo-liberalism, an ideology who has deceptively brainwashed us into believing that the more we privatise and outsource government services, the less we need to regulate and scrutinise possible wrongdoing.

“Who would have thought that companies with a legal obligation to maximise profit for shareholders would put the interests of shareholders ahead of the interests of vulnerable people that are easy to exploit?,” Denniss retorts.

“Ultimately the people tasked with overseeing our services, we just keep coming across the same problem. They’re not doing a very good job.”

“They don’t do inspections, they don’t demand answers and they’re not publicly critical when they find things.”

“It’s a dereliction of duty.”

Click PLAY below to listen to the full interview