A company director in Australia assumes significant personal and professional responsibility. Their duties include:
being honest and careful in all dealings,
understanding what the company is doing,
making sure the company can pay its debts on time,
ensuring the company keeps proper financial records,
acting in the company’s best interests, even if this conflicts with the Director’s personal interests,
using any information that the Director receives only for the good of the company. Using information to gain an unfair advantage for Director personally or others could be a crime.
Courts can impose heavy fines for breaches of Australian Corporations Law and can even send directors to prison. Depending on the nature of the company or business being conducted by that company, Directors may also be held PERSONALLY liable in relation to issues relating to superannuation, tax offences, breaches of consumer laws and competition laws, breaches of environmental laws and regulations, breaches of anti-discrimination laws and workplace health and safety laws and regulations. These types of breaches may result in the Director being liable to pay quite large financial sums and/or face imprisonment for the breach.