Last week in its most pathetic effort since it waved feathers at the perpetrators of the Firepower fraud, ASIC received the penalties it requested for Emmanuel and Julie Cassimatis: fines of $70,000 each and banned for seven years from managing corporations. Let me repeat that: total fines of $140,000 and an irrelevant temporary restraint for being the lynchpins in blowing billions of other people’s money. They can still be directors of their private companies. And let me also repeat that is the only penalty ASIC requested from Justice John Dowsett in the Federal Court. This wasn’t a case of some sleepy beak being fooled by smart defence lawyers – it was all ASIC’s own work. It seems Justice Dowsett wasn’t very impressed with the hapless regulator. He signalled that, given precedent in other cases including the Australian Wheat Board fiasco, higher penalties could have been applied than the $70,000 suggested by ASIC. "In my view the respondents' misconduct was more serious... it continued over a lengthy period of time, was entirely initiated by them and executed under their supervision," he said.

"I am inclined to think that the penalty sought by ASIC is on the low side, having regard to the cases to which I have been referred. "However there are only a handful of them. In those circumstances, it is better that I adopt the figure as suggested by ASIC." It was, of course, ASIC’s decision to only offer that handful of cases. If the judge had been informed of ASIC’s appalling regulatory record with Storm and Emmanuel Cassimatis’ history as a dodgy financial advisor – Cassimatis was sacked by MLC back in the 1990s – he might have been even less impressed. ASIC was the dopey regulator that was repeatedly told Storm was rotten but gave the company a tick anyway just before the GFC exposed the house of cards. Storm, like Firepower, demonstrated ASIC wouldn’t know if its own backside was on fire.

When ASIC isn’t outsourcing enforcement to class action ambulance chasers, making lawyers and litigation funders rich, it turns up after the event to stick a Post-It Note on the stable gate: “Maybe this should have been shut. Anyone?” With its own failure exposed by letting scandals run until they fall over under their own weight, the penalties for the Storm and Firepower perpetrators demonstrate how toothless ASIC is after the event. ASIC staff, managers and chairmen often roll through individual cases and the system too quickly to leave any mark at all. Another chairman is having a crack. Mr James Shipton, a former banker, has begun his term with the wan observation that it would be nice if banks had better culture, if bankers were more professional. No doubt it also would be nice if everyone held hands, sang Kumbaya and didn’t cheat at cricket. I’ve seen ASIC chairmen come and go, usually with brave opening statements, without the organisation becoming pro-active. Shipton’s immediate predecessor became a little hairy-chested towards the end of his spell, joining in the bank pile-on, but what ASIC has never managed is to generate a sense of leadership with fire in the belly, a desire to kick heads and get ahead of the game, instead of fluffing around with soft legal niceties and culture talk after the event.

The Commonwealth Bank, Macquarie and Bank of Queensland were eventually dragged into paying compensation for their roles in the Storm scandal, but enormous personal damage and angst had already been suffered. I’m one who thinks mug punters have to take some responsibility for being mugs. Everyone has the right to go broke gambling if they want to. It’s a bit rich to always try to blame a bank for doing what you’ve asked it to do – provide a loan. But the Storm model and many of the subsequent loans were so egregious as to be on another level of culpability. All the Storm gang couldn’t have been so stupid as to not know what was happening. When I first came across a Storm operative in regional Queensland, it took one five-minute phone call to a legitimate financial advisor to know all that needed to be known: Storm was very bad news indeed, it was doing terrible things and should only be touched with a cattle prod. Good people told ASIC that to no avail.