Page 2358 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 29 August 2007
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become involved in deciding which companies should be individually boycotted, but this is the crux of the matter. By refusing to give such instructions, by refusing to stick his neck out and to have the courage of his convictions, he must bear responsibility for the consequences of his omissions as well as his actions. The only guidelines issued to the ACT’s financial managers are to achieve returns equal to or marginally in excess of a standard market benchmark. They are totally devoid of moral content—no social or environmental perspective whatsoever.
Given that investment determines the future of economic activity, it is no wonder that the world is in such a mess. The government is not alone, of course. The whole system is set up to make it easy for us to ignore the moral ramifications of our consumer and investment decisions. Company structures are complex, and even if one were minded to boycott products made by a company that, say, exploits child labour, illegally destroys old-growth forest ecosystems, or murders indigenous people who get in its way, it would take a fearsome amount of research to identify all the affiliated companies and subsidiaries and all the trade names under which they operate.
There is massive resistance in the corporate world, pushed through the WTO, expressed in trade agreements and supported by our federal government, to requiring or even enabling honesty in product labelling. But governments have ample resources to identify companies that engage in such undesirable activities and they have a moral obligation to do what they can to resist the spread of such dangerous values. Mind you, we invest in Imperial Tobacco Australia and Japan Tobacco, and it obviously does not take much imagination to realise that these companies are doing what they can to make sure that the drugs they sell end up costing the ACT taxpayer far more in health and other costs than we recoup by sharing in their dividends and share price increases.
The report of the review into ethical investment issues was due to be provided to the Chief Minister by the end of May. I have been told by the Chief Minister in estimates that it would be made available and I have inquired many times from his office and been told the usual thing: manana. The glacial speed with which these issues are being progressed seems to mirror the incredibly tardy response time which accompanied the release of the government’s climate change policy. Of course, both policies are part of the same problem. While I do not foresee much meaningful change on this issue, I continue to hope that there will be. I certainly hope that the government discovers a greater sense of urgency in addressing this aspect of the damage that its actions are causing, which is well within its purview to change.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra–Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Minister for the Environment, Water and Climate Change, Minister for the Arts) (4.35): I take the opportunity to thank members for their contribution and to respond most particularly to Dr Foskey’s gratuitously offensive remarks addressed to me and the government in the presentation she has just completed. I say that advisedly. I was extremely disappointed, Dr Foskey, by that particular presentation, more so than anything else I have heard you deliver in this place, in that you sought to invest in me personal, moral responsibility for the actions of arms manufacturers around the world. This is another burden that you would ask me to bear in my day-to-day life—that I, as Chief Minister of the territory, need to accept personal responsibility for the actions of arms manufacturers and foreign nations regarding the arms they use, and for other issues around the world.
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