The speech was delivered at an APEC Regional Symposium held in Melbourne on 8-9 March 2011 to focus on regulation in its regional and global context, promoting regulatory reforms across financial market sectors and international borders.

In the speech, Ms Diplock discusses the lessons of the global financial crisis, including the need to recognise systematic risk in an environment where "global markets are vitally interconnected" and "governance and sustainability matter". Ms Diplock goes on to explore the concept of a 'network model' of global financial markets and how this model might be used as the basis for regulation going forward, requiring the global application of regulation, including accounting, auditing and sustainability.

An extract of the speech follows:

Applying the network model to finance refocuses our attention from static institutions to constantly interacting market dynamics; to the links between commodities markets, energy markets, carbon markets and the broader financial markets.

The network model highlights the basic fact that good systemic health is vital to us all, and that we cannot afford to let it take second place to individual, short-term desires. This is why that sustainability is now as crucial an aspect of good governance in the financial field as it is in the environmental.

Narrowly focused, individual profit-seeking must not allowed to threaten the system itself. This is not mere virtue; it is necessity. Without the system that supports them, individuals cannot survive.

The new network model suggests that anything and everything related to markets and their governance, regulation, financial reporting, accounting and auditing must be globally oriented.

Click for the full text of the speech (link to IOSCO website). A background paper presented at the Symposium, Regulatory Reform Post the Global Financial Crisis: An Overview, is available on The Australian APEC Study Centre website.