Page 2149 - Week 06 - Thursday, 26 June 2008
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Another year later, the fund managers who control our investments have still not received firm guidelines as to how our investments are filtered or our shareholder votes are to be exercised. While the ACT acting alone would be quite ineffectual in most instances, it would not damage our rates of return and it would at least demonstrate some evidence of an awareness of the ethical dimension of economic decisions. Given that that is the excuse Treasury and the commissioned report handed the Treasurer for not doing anything of any consequence for years, it is the least we could have expected.
At a briefing I called for a month or two ago, I learned that nothing has happened which has had any effect whatsoever on the disposition of our investments. All that has happened, it seems, is talk—talk, talk, report and more talk. And this talk is not cheap. The people involved in this report and this talk are highly paid individuals.
I understand that a number of government superannuation fund managers are getting together to agree on what they should say in annual general meetings and someone is considering giving fund managers some vague directions at some vague date in the future as to what they should consider when making their investment decisions. From what I have heard, the directions being drafted will be that, if the ethical downside of an investment decision should threaten in the slightest bit the return which might be had from tobacco or cluster bombs, do not even think about selling Raytheon or British-American tobacco shares.
It is clear that the climate change sceptics and economic free-market ideologues still hold the strings over this government, which apparently lacks the financial expertise or ethical conviction to take responsibility for the consequences of its actions. This timidity or selective blindness is a bit baffling. It is out of character. This Chief Minister has not been backward in standing up to bullies, in standing up for his values in other areas, so why is he so ineffectual in this one? Just because other treasurers and the overwhelming preponderance of free-market ideologues do not see this situation as a scandal does not mean that future generations will not condemn us for stealing their natural capital to maintain our plush lifestyles by continuing to invest dumbly in businesses and activities which severely compromise their quality of life. This is what the Treasurer said of Kate Carnell in 1999:
What more damning indictment of a government can there be than for it simply to walk away from its fundamental obligation to ensure the safety of its citizens?
A one-eyed fixation on short-term profit margins is not ensuring the long-term safety of ACT citizens or their short-term safety. Our investments in Imperial Tobacco and Japan Tobacco both support and endorse their activities in pushing dangerous drugs which 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.
Does it strike anyone else as strange that we have the health minister urging people to give up smoking, presenting statistics to show that almost a third of all ACT students surveyed reported having smoked, while, on the other hand, the Treasurer takes credit for the profits made from convincing them to poison themselves? Many people who smoke die from smoking-related causes. I personally believe that adults should have
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