Who polices the police?

That is, of course, a rhetorical question, asked with sufficient repetitiveness that it must signify a desihn flaw in the way we organise ourselves. Anyway, two more examples of it show up in the business pages of the Herald today.

A FORMER head of the National Crime Authority has blasted Australia's top prosecutor over his reluctance to take action against former Reserve Bank board member and tax adventurer Robert Gerard. Peter Faris accused the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, Damian Bugg, a fellow QC, of "bureaucratic blindness and ineptitude".

Mr Bugg told a recent Senate Committee it was wrong to say he was the "gatekeeper" to what was prosecuted and what was not. "We are totally dependent on what is referred to us," he said in discussions with Labor Senator Joe Ludwig about the Gerard case.

It was revealed last year Tax Office auditors believed Mr Gerard's company, Gerard Industries, established an elaborate insurance "sham" to evade tax, but that the Tax Office settled the case without imposing penalties or referring it to prosecutors.

Mr Bugg confirmed the Tax Office never referred the Gerard file to him. "The matter was never referred to my office," he said.

Mr Faris criticised the DPP last year over his failure to prosecute entertainer Steve Vizard for insider trading, yesterday said Mr Bugg's comments were technically accurate but missed the point. "In the world of real life it's not so much whether he has the legal power to direct the ATO to give him the Gerard brief, but whether he asked," he said.

Mr Faris said the Tax Office had its own agenda: collecting money rather than ensuring that criminal conduct was prosecuted. But if Mr Bugg was also uninterested, "that means nobody does it. It's a typical bureaucracy: 'It's not my job'."

A spokesman for the DPP said it was offensive to suggest he was protecting any person or institution. "To suggest that the DPP should seek to intercede in a case where it has no power to do so and has no brief, is to suggest that this matter be dealt with differently to the normal processes," he said.

QC's blast over Gerard inaction

THE Australian Stock Exchange [a privatised corporation which also serves as the public watchdog of the equity market exchange] insists a 15 per cent rise in a share price over 10 trading days doesn't warrant a speeding ticket.

The market regulator was responding to surprise that a swab had not been called for after Sydney Futures Exchange's stellar run in the two weeks prior to Monday's announcement revealing plans for a combined $5 billion business.

The start of the price rise just happened to coincide with the day talks began between the ASX and SFE.

ASX spokesman Gervase Greene told Xchange the rise in the SFE's share price was not "dramatic" enough to suggest news of the talks had leaked. Enough other factors were at play - including a 3.7 per cent rise in the All Ords over the period and Macquarie Bank pulling out of its bid for the London Stock Exchange - to explain the rise in the share price, Mr Greene said.

As Mr Greene put it, if any other company's share price had risen so fast over the same period it wouldn't "necessarily demand" a notification.

Given the ASX's involvement, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission has taken control of overseeing market compliance for this particular deal.

So what does ASIC think of the SFE's share price rise? "We cannot comment specifically, however ASIC monitors the trading associated with major market announcements," an ASIC representative said.

Punters can whinge all they like but the stewards are the jockey, owners and judges