Saskia chairs the audit committee of a government owned company. The board complies with commonly accepted good governance practices and is well supported by a qualified and skilful secretariat. The board are accustomed to getting good marks in their annual performance review and, in five years service, Saskia has not seen any substantive issues raised in reviews. She suspects that a favourable outcome has been a selection criterion for the review consultancy.

Susanne is a director of a small family company that has operated reasonably successfully for about eight years. Demand for the company’s product is strong and growing. Recently cash flow has been tight and the company has delayed payments to creditors and not submitted a couple of BAS statements so as to use the net GST that would otherwise be paid out.

Timothy (Tim) is a director of his family business. His fellow directors are his brother and his brother’s wife. He and his brother won 40% of the shares each and the remaining 20% are held in a trust for the grandchildren of the founder, Tim’s deceased father. Tim is the managing director and his brother is non executive chairman. All board members are over sixty years old.