Directors are largely responsible for the good governance of corporations, which at its core, requires financial literacy. Emerging research shows that directors consistently fall short on measures assessing their financial literacy. This is unsurprising given the lack of restrictions on who can be a director in Australia, leaving many at risk of serious penalties. While it would be impractical to mandate training for every director, this article describes a framework to identify sectors in which breaches of finance-related duties are most common, and might be prevented by mandatory financial literacy training. After conducting searches through case law and other enforcement records, this article identifies that the most vulnerable sectors are construction, real estate, and financial services. Analysis revealed that director financial literacy training may be most effective to prevent breaches in the construction and real estate sectors.
Tools that embody well-trained artificial intelligence (AI) models offer resource-strapped superannuation fund trustees the prospect of fast, efficient and rigorous support for their decision-making. But there are operational and legal risks. Not all the decisions a superannuation fund trustee is called upon to make are therefore suited to the application of AI. So what might super fund trustees properly use AIto do? This article considers the legal and practical issues facing the trustees of superannuation funds who may be contemplating employing AI tools in the various aspects of administering their funds. It finds that above and beyond the well-documented potential for AI models (and therefore the tools that use them) to generate nonsensical outputs, the requirement, fundamental to the office of trustee, to be able to demonstrate careful personal engagement in the exercise of key discretions poses challenges that are particularly acute.
The Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) does not currently contribute to legislative efforts to hold companies accountable for human rights harms or to provide remedies for affected individuals. While the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights anticipate a central role for corporate law, international obligations have been implemented outside corporations law. Some jurisdictions-such as France, Germany, and the European Union-have introduced mandatory human rights due diligence (mHREDD) regimes. France embeds these in its corporate code; Germany's regime operates alongside it. However, these reforms remain politically contested, with both the German Act and the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive facing delays. This article considers whether, and in what form, a due diligence obligation could be introduced into Australian corporations law. Drawing on international developments, it proposes a model requiring risk analysis, compliance systems, grievance mechanisms, and remedy access, and considers ASIC's potential role in supervision and enforcement.
