I agree. One of the reasons I put my "niggling doubts" aside when deciding whether or not to invest was that I thought we lived in a first world country where regulators such as ASIC would not allow this type of thing to happen. The fact that ASIC is still silently observing when there are such obvious and blatant breaches in plain view has made me question how confident I feel with investing my money anywhere. If every other ASX listed company thinks of ASIC the same way that the pirates do, or even they see what the pirates are getting away with, what's to stop them cashing in on the action and doing the same thing?
And it's not just me thinking this way. I've spoken to numerous people who have said things like "I will never invest in a LIC again", "I will never invest in Queensland again", or "I will never invest in the stockmarket again".
I know HML is small fry compared to the big 4 banks, and the pirates transgressions are somewhat complex and some may even fall into grey areas. But ultimately ASIC still needs to do something about these parasites because if they don't, people will lose faith in the integrity of the Australian economy and they won't invest in it.
