On 5 December 2025, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) published a speech by Commissioner Kate O’Rourke at the 2025 Small Business Association of Australia International Small Business Summit. The speech is entitled ‘Time to get on with business’.
In her speech Commissioner O’Rourke outlines ASIC’s program to ease regulatory burdens on small businesses and improve the usability of its services, while preparing the market for the phased introduction of mandatory climate-related financial disclosures. She emphasizes that although media coverage often focuses on ASIC’s large-scale enforcement, protecting small businesses and ensuring a fair marketplace is a core enforcement driver supported by a dedicated small business enforcement team and stakeholder engagement.
Regulatory Simplification
The speech also covers ASIC’s multi-year regulatory simplification program, with immediate focus on two workstreams: improving access to regulatory information and making it easier to interact with ASIC. Recent changes noted by Commissioner O’Rourke include a redesigned website with better navigation, an upgraded search function, removal of over 9,000 duplicative pages, and a consolidated regulatory resources search. ASIC is also restructuring guidance to reduce confusion and is developing a regulatory roadmap tailored for directors of small companies, covering the lifecycle of starting, operating, closing, and reinstating a company.
Interacting with ASIC
When discussing interaction and registry services, Commissioner O’Rourke acknowledges user pain points, including multiple portals, slow systems, and fragmented experiences for users. To address these issues ASIC has launched its RegistryConnect program which is modernising registry technology to stabilize services, streamline transactions, improve data integrity, and strengthen authentication, including a future linkage of director IDs to the companies register. Short-term fixes already implemented include acceptance of email lodgements where online options are unavailable, electronic signatures on all forms, reduced call waiting times, upgraded mainframe capacity, reduced downtime, and a new professional registers search with improved payment processes.
Climate Reporting
Finally, Commissioner O’Rourke addresses climate reporting. While mandatory disclosures apply only to large entities meeting thresholds on revenue, assets, or employees, small businesses in larger value chains may be asked to supply emissions and energy data. ASIC has published a sustainability reporting for small businesses page and is developing educational resources and will offer roadshows to take people through them.