Regulatory Bodies, Torts, and Negligence in Australian Law

This assignment provides an overview of key regulatory bodies in Australia, including the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), detailing their respective roles and responsibilities. The ACCC is responsible for enforcing competition and consumer laws, ASIC regulates companies and financial markets, and the RBA manages monetary policy and financial stability. Furthermore, the assignment outlines the basic principles of the law of torts, focusing on negligence and negligent misstatements. It defines torts as wrongful acts leading to civil action, and negligence as a failure to exercise reasonable care. The assignment breaks down the elements needed to establish negligence, including duty of care, breach of duty, causation of loss or injury, and the concept of negligent misstatement, emphasizing the importance of fault, actual damage, and remedy in tort law.

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Written Activity
1. Regulatory Bodies in Australia
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC): Some of the regulatory bodies
operating in Australia include the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
The responsibility to administer the provisions of Competition and Consumer Act, 2010 has been
provided to the ACCC. This legislation also incorporated the Australian Consumer Law. In this
way, it can be said that the objective of this legislation is to promote competition and along with
the similar legislative provisions that have been enforced by State and Territory legislation, to
promote fair trading and to ensure the protection of the consumers. All these have become the
responsibilities of the ACCC. This legislation also deals with anti-competitive and unfair market
practices, acquisitions and mergers by the companies, product liability and product safety as well
as the access of third party to the facilities that have been national significance.
Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC): The second regulatory authority that
is a part of this written activity is the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
The ASIC can be described as the sole regulator in case of registered companies in Australia. It
is among the three bodies of the federal government that have the responsibility to regulate
financial services. The provisions of the Corporations Act, 2001 are administered by the ASIC.
This legislation provides the law that regulates the incorporated, management and operations of
the companies in Australia. In this way, the main responsibility of the ASIC is to regulate the

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conduct of companies in Australia. At the same time, the ASIC also have the responsibility to
support the integrity and to maintain fairness in the affairs of the company and financial markets.
Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA): The reserve Bank of Australia is a statutory body that
performs the central banking functions in Australia. RBA is wholly owned by the Federal
Government of Australia. The two broad areas of the responsibility of the RBA can be described
as monetary policy and ensuring financial stability. The monetary policy of the RBA is basically
aimed at maintaining inflation rates at the level that is most conducive for sustainable growth. In
the same way, the aim of the financial stability policy is to prevent excessive risk in the financial
system and also to limit the impact of financial disturbances, if any. While fulfilling this room,
the Reserve Bank is also particularly responsible to maintain the efficiency of payment system.

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2. Outline the basic principles of the law of torts, including that relating to negligence and
to negligent misstatements.
A tort can be described as a wrongful act or omission due to which the other party gets a right to
bring action in a civil court against the party that was responsible for the wrongful act (Gardiner
and McGlone, 1998). In this context, negligence can be described as the failure of a party to take
reasonable care or the steps that are necessary to prevent causing loss of injury to the other
person (Deakin, Johnston and Markesinis, 2003). The four basic elements that should be present
in order to establish the negligence of the other party can be described as follows. First of all,
there should be a duty of care present on part of the party. Hence it is necessary to establish that
such party had a duty of care towards the other. The next element is that the duty of care should
be breached by such party. Therefore the party that owes a duty of care, towards the other,
should be such duty. As a result of this breach, loss or injury should be caused to the other party.
Such breach should be the direct cause of the loss or injury (Kujinga, 2009).
In this regard, a negligent misstatement can be described as an inaccurate statement that has been
made honestly, but carelessly. Generally, such statement is made in the form of advice that is
given by a party having special knowledge or skill to the other party (McDonald, 2005).
Therefore the elements that need to be established in such a case include the following:-
Element of Fault: It needs to be established in the court that a tort has been committed by one
party, either intentionally or negligently.
Actual damage: It is also the responsibility of the claimant to establish that actual loss or injury
has been suffered due to the negligence of the other party.

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Remedy: The purpose of the law of tort is to compensate the victims instead of punishing the
wrongdoers. Hence, the court tries to put the victim in the same place in which the victim would
have been if the wrongful act did not took place.

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References
David Gardiner and Frances McGlone, (1998) Outline of Torts (2nd ed,), Butterworths
Deakin, S., Johnston A and Markesinis B (2003) Markesinis and Deakin's Tort Law, Oxford
University Press
Kujinga, Benjamin (2009). "Reasonable Care And Skill — The Modern Scope Of The Auditor's
Duty". GAA Accounting
McDonald, Barbara (2005) "Legislative Intervention in the Law of Negligence: The Common
Law, Statutory Interpretation and Tort Reform in Australia". Sydney Law Review. 27 (3)