It might seem ungracious that, in the very week Clive Palmer floats the very civic idea of a billionaires' blind trust to invest in traditional media companies, we point this out. But somebody has to do it.

Palmer's flagship companies Mineralogy and Resourcehouse have failed to lodge their accounts in compliance with the Corporations Act. We will get to the details in a moment.

Suffice it to say that this is not a story about Palmer per se. Or Gina Rinehart, whose Hancock Prospecting has also failed to lodge accounts for the past two years, as was revealed last week. It is about the failure of government.

It is the misfortune of billionaires, and we say this without a hint of irony, to be in the public eye. They serve as first-rate subjects to prove a public point. And the point here is that if the government and its agencies can't get their act together to make high-profile types such as Palmer and Rinehart comply with their laws, why should anybody else bother?

Are billionaires simply too big to touch? There was a song and dance made by press release last June when the Melbourne Magistrate's Court fined a Victorian company, Fulcrum Equity, $15,000 for failing to lodge its annual financial reports with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.