Page 5659 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 6 December 2011
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MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (10.28): I would like to start by thanking my fellow committee members and, of course, Dr Cullen for her great work in putting this report together. I have put forward a dissenting report because I fundamentally disagree with recommendation 1, which is to reject the whole bill. However, I am very pleased to say that I think a lot of the rest of the report is not consistent with the first recommendation. In fact, there are some very positive things in the report.
First, I should deal with the matter, which I mentioned in my dissenting report, that was dealt with in the main report of any perceived conflict of interest I may have. I will say it again so that it is on the public record: I hold 4.98 per cent of the shares in Australian Ethical Investment and I was executive director for 17 years. I clearly have an interest in ethical investment, but in the terms of this debate it is not in any way a financial interest.
Everyone agreed that there was no likelihood or possibility that, were this bill to be passed in any form, it would be of any particular financial advantage to me. Also, I did consult with the ethics adviser who felt that the major issue for me from an ethical point of view in being involved with this inquiry was whether or not I had an open mind about whether doing this was the right thing or the wrong thing for the ACT government. I think that is true. I did have an open mind about it. I would also like to put on the record that I do not claim all of my investments are ethical. I certainly have money in some superannuation funds for which I am sure some of the investments would not fit the requirements of Ms Hunter’s bill.
That having been said as introduction, the majority of the committee recommended that the bill not be tabled and that if it were tabled, it not be supported. As I said, the bill has merit in that many of the recommendations of the committee are in fact consistent with the broad direction of the bill. So I think that actually the rest of the report is not consistent with recommendation 1.
What I think is going on here is that we have all got very hung up with the word “ethical”. A lot of the discussion in the committee has been around what we mean by “ethical”. If that is the real debate, I think that in fact it would have been much better if the committee made recommendations to amend the bill. The first and most obvious recommendation would be to change the name of the bill—maybe to the “socially responsible investment bill” or the “doing well by doing good bill” or the “responsible investment bill”. On the basis of the committee’s discussion, that seemed to be the most major issue.
I personally think that ethics are involved in politics. I looked at the dictionary definition and ethics are “moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or conducting of activity”. In the same way that we have ethics as individuals, as groups we can have ethical ideas. I spoke about a couple of examples in my dissenting report, but I think maybe another example would be the ALP conference over the last weekend.
The two big issues that made the news were clearly, I think, somewhat ethical issues. Gay marriage—what other sort of issue is it if it is not a moral and ethical issue?
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