Page 3048 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
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did. Rather, I suspect it was just left to fund managers who have never engaged with these issues.
The point I am making is that this is something the ACT government can do, just as many governments across the world have been doing for many years. Whilst we may not be doing it actively, we are effectively, as the Treasurer put it, standing there on the floor opposing action to address these terrible harms that are highlighted in these motions. We did vote in the plainest and truest sense of the words against action to try and prevent the children of people living in poverty from going hungry because their parents are addicted to cigarettes.
There are a range of mechanisms, and these differ across the world, that ensure that beneficial owners can express their views. For example, in the UK the law provides for beneficial owners to vote directly on resolutions and not just exercise their rights through fund managers. This capability does not exist in the US, and beneficial owners do have to instruct the legal owners and exercise their rights to determine the voting right that attaches to the ownership of the shares. The ACT is able to vote yes on the simple question of whether a particular company should do something, for instance, to address child sexual exploitation in their operations.
I urge the Treasurer to clarify the advice she is getting, because what she said yesterday is simply incorrect. We have not oversimplified the issue; I urge the Treasurer to get further advice on that point. That is a very important matter.
I would also like to make the point that while, as the Treasurer said yesterday, the ACT could be said to be leading the way amongst Australian jurisdictions, the bar is very low. Other governments such as Massachusetts and California in the US are in some cases the ones driving the resolutions for reform. I also make the point, as I am sure I have done before, that the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, the Norwegian government pension fund, has a very active ethical investment policy. The $525 billion fund has an active screening policy that carefully considers which companies they will and will not invest in and how they engage with companies when concerns are raised.
That brings me to another point the Treasurer made in response to our questions that was particularly concerning. It was the issue that, because we have such a small holding in any particular company, our vote is insignificant. The extension is, of course, that it therefore does not matter what we do. Apart from the obvious concern that we should be standing up for our values, there are tangible outcomes from our votes that the Treasurer obviously is not aware of.
We should care about the principle and we should be prepared to do whatever we can about things that are harmful or abhorrent. I really do not understand why a government that prides itself, and rightly so, on standing up for human rights principles is not prepared to do just that on behalf of other communities and make the point that we think that a particular practice is unacceptable. Even if there is no tangible outcome, which is not the case, why does the government not want to stand up and say, “We think that a particular company should do something to stop child sex trafficking,” or that a company should recognise the human right to water and ensure that it does not deprive people of that right as a result of its operations?
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