Page 5661 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 6 December 2011
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have had to date that although the ACT government has signed up to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment, the signing up has not made any practical impact.
I have asked Treasury, and my colleague Ms Hunter has asked on many occasions, what investment decisions have been made as a result of this. What engagement with companies has been made as a result of this? The answer has basically been none. This is incredibly disappointing. One of my concerns is that this report will have the same level of impact on our investments as our decision to sign up with UN PRI. I would like to see it make a lot more impact and I am hopeful that possibly it will.
Recommendation 4 is coming on to be a very useful recommendation. It says:
The committee recommends that the ACT Government, as an institutional investor should actively pursue a policy of responsible investment with selective use of exclusion-based or negative screening strategies in the context of public policy.
This is an excellent recommendation and it is one that I one hundred per cent agree with. It is one that is totally consistent with the thrust of Ms Hunter’s bill, which is why I am surprised by recommendation 1. I one hundred per cent agree with this.
The thing that becomes very unclear, though, in the majority of the committee’s report is on what basis we are going to do the exclusions or the negative screening. Ms Hunter’s bill did propose a methodology. She proposed a list of areas which we would not invest in. One of the pieces of evidence we got suggested that it might be better if, rather than that being in the bill itself, it be a disallowable instrument. I think that that is an idea that does have some merit. That was a suggestion of Mr Scott Donald. I think that idea of a disallowable instrument does have merit.
Turning to what the majority of the committee looked at, they are saying that norms-based investment criteria are the appropriate way by which governments, as institutional investors, should do this because they are founded under universally agreed and accepted principles. If they are universally agreed and accepted principles, why are they not listed in the report? The report gives us no guidance as to what these universally agreed and accepted principles might be. The committee says in paragraph 4.11:
Norms-based investment criteria or principled based investment criteria are essential for any form of EI or SRI responsible investment by governments.
Then in that paragraph it says these criteria:
… rest on universally agreed and accepted principles, in the form of international standards, treaties and conventions …
Which international standards, treaties and conventions are we planning to actually use? There are hundreds and hundreds of them. There are thousands of international treaties and conventions. What are we actually meaning by this? It just does not really make an awful lot of sense. It would appear that possibly what would happen here is
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