Commonwealth Numbered Acts

AUSTRALIAN SECURITIES COMMISSION ACT 1989 No. 90 of 1989 - SECT 3

3. (1) The objects of this Act are:

   (a)  to establish an Australian Securities Commission to administer the
        laws of the Commonwealth relating to companies, securities and the
        futures industry;

   (b)  to provide for the functions, powers and business of the Commission;

   (c)  to establish a Companies and Securities Advisory Committee to provide
        informed and expert advice to the Minister about the content,
        operation and administration of those laws, about corporations and
        about the securities markets and futures markets; and

   (d)  to establish a Corporations and Securities Panel, a Companies Auditors
        and Liquidators Disciplinary Board, an Accounting Standards Review
        Board and a Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and
        Securities.

(2) In performing its functions and exercising its powers, the Commission
shall strive:

   (a)  to maintain, facilitate, and improve, the performance of companies,
        and of the securities markets and futures markets, in the interests of
        commercial certainty, reducing business costs, and the efficiency and
        development of the economy;

   (b)  to maintain the confidence of investors in the securities markets and
        futures markets by ensuring adequate protection for such investors;

   (c)  to achieve uniformity throughout Australia in how the Commission and
        its delegates perform those functions and exercise those powers;

   (d)  to administer national scheme laws effectively but with a minimum of
        procedural requirements;

   (e)  to receive, process, and store, efficiently and quickly, the documents
        lodged with, and the information given to, the Commission under
        national scheme laws;

   (f)  to ensure that those documents, and that information, are available as
        soon as possible for access by the public; and

   (g)  to take whatever action it can take, and is necessary, in order to
        enforce and give effect to national scheme laws.