"There has been a loss of mojo in Australian boards. There is a conservativeness compared to what we see in the US, but also the short-termism of our funds management industry in Australia," he told a conference in Sydney.
Osmond said instead of being a place where capital could be raised for businesses to expand and innovate, the stock market had turned into a "capital return" exchange, where cash was paid to investors in the form of dividends, buy-backs and takeovers.
In short, rather than having a go and investing in growth, businesses are giving their cash away, as if they don't know what to do with it.
The Australian share market has shrunk to less than the size of the economy - to 0.9 times gross domestic product to be precise. A decade ago it was 1.2 times GDP. In the US, it's about 1.9 times GDP, Osmond noted. (In case you were wondering, the New Zealand share market is just 0.4 times its GDP.)
Big businesses will point the finger at fund managers, who they say have no tolerance for even a poor half-year result and so don't want companies taking any risks.
Maybe, but fund managers don't run businesses. Boards do.
Two decades of unfettered growth fuelled by the mining boom has made Australian business complacent. A lot of companies haven't had to go out and create opportunities because the strong economy meant business as usual was good enough.
Rather than seeking to grow the economy, businesses instead tussle over getting a bigger piece of what's already there for themselves.
They focus on what the Government should be doing to help them increase their profits rather than seeking out opportunities. That might be a generalisation, but it's certainly true of business groups.
We saw a good example of this last year when the Business Council of Australia released its "Action Plan for Enduring Prosperity".
This report contained 93 recommendations - 92 of which asked the Government to do something. It wasn't so much an action plan as a plea.
An authority no less than the Reserve Bank is perplexed as to why businesses aren't investing. "Business investment has remained subdued even though many of the conditions for a recovery have been in place for some time," the RBA said this month.
There's no shortage of credit and interest rates are low.
It's time for businesses to stop complaining and to get on with it.
Banks rein in housing investment
The one area of investment that has been strong in Australia is housing and regulators are worried, just as they are in New Zealand.
The move by John Key to hit property speculators with a capital gains tax has received wide coverage in Australia, as has the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's requirement that investors have a minimum deposit of 30 per cent for residential property mortgages.
Australia already has a capital gains tax - which applies to any investment over any period - so that idea's not a goer.
Government and regulators are loath to put lending restrictions on banks. But no one dislikes the idea more than the banks, which this week moved to curb their own lending, lest the regulators are forced to.
The major banks have effectively raised their interest rates for residential property mortgages by scrapping or scaling back the generous discounts they typically offer to investors who take out large loans. And there are signs some banks are insisting investors have a mortgage deposit of at least 20 per cent. On Friday, Macquarie Bank announced it would charge property investors a higher interest rate than owner-occupiers.
But there are doubts such measures will be as effective in curbing the housing investment boom as New Zealand's regulatory intervention. "At the margin it may dampen investor demand and it's worth trying," well-regarded economist Saul Eslake of Merrill Lynch was quoted as saying. "It's clearly not as bold as the kind of action that's being taken on the other side of the Tasman."
Quite right. It will take more than a tweaking of lending standards and interest rates to cool Australians' insatiable appetite to invest in property.
