Graeme Samuel’s guide to (avoiding) regulatory capture

Public servants can’t match the masters of the universe for sheer pay.

But there are other consolations, as outlined by former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chief turned Monash Professor Graeme Samuel during a recent parliamentary hearing.

“There’s a thing called psychic income,” he told Greens Senator Barbara Pocock last month. “The bad definition of it is that you love rubbing shoulders with important people, and it’s that that gives you the reward for holding high office.”

Psychic income can be accrued from broad societal respect for works done in the public interest. But twisted to mere basking in the pandering of the self-interested, it can “capture regulators very badly and cause problems”.

So, Pocock asked, what does Samuel think of ATO second commissioner (and contender for the top job) Jeremy Hirschhorn taking a $12,000 trip to Paris courtesy of PwC? The November 2019 trip, to address a global tax conference, occurred as PwC wrestled with the ATO over its tax leaks scandal.