Corporations Deceived by Woke Madness, By James Reed
I love capitalism as much as the next dissent Righter, but as argued by Janet Albrechtsen, major Australian corporations are falling for the woke madness, hook, line and sinker. We saw this with the Voice referendum where millions were coughed up by leading Australian corporations, to get with the "vibe," and not to be seen as "racist." And it did not end with the Voice defeat, no, they did not learn their lesson, with the big thing now the UN's Agenda 2030 and the sustainable development goals. Leading corporations now have sustainability reports, linked to the UN Agenda 2030 goals.
Albrechtsen notes just how radical these agenda are: "Take goal five – to "achieve gender equality and empower women and girls". That's laudable. Except the UN's overview of this goal advocates legislated quotas for parliaments on the grounds that these are needed to "achieve equality in politics". If someone proposed legislating 50 per cent female-only seats in parliament, it would be an understatement to say that would be controversial. So why are companies making this their business?
It gets worse. To understand where goal five is headed, you have to read the underlying targets. Target 5.6 aims to "ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences."
That would seem to imply the Kamala Harris position on free abortion up until birth, arguably; certainly, this is what the UN wants in its mad depopulation agenda. Albrechtsen gives corporations the benefit of the doubt here, but in the US we have seen many corporations embrace radical Left agendas, even if it meant, go woke go broke, with Bud Light beer being one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bud_Light_boycott.
Could it be that like the universities other institutions, capitalism itself has now been corrupted by woke?
"Air New Zealand, one of the most prominent adherents of the sustainability focus of modern corporations, has been mugged by the reality of unsustainable sustainability targets. It recently abandoned its 2030 carbon intensity reduction targets. Meanwhile, many of its Australian peers are signing up to new forms.
You may not have heard about these latest ones. No less real, these more covert environmental, social and governance straitjackets make one wonder: is there any end to corporate Australia's gullibility, if not downright negligence?
The UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals are no different. It's politics, pure and simple. But that hasn't stopped the stampede of corporate cheerleaders signing up to the SDG goals, led by BHP and Commonwealth Bank. According to a survey done as long ago as 2019 by RMIT and Global Compact Network Australia, 37 per cent of the ASX 150 companies referred to the SDGs in their sustainability reports. Those companies in the top 20 for reporting against the SDGs represented 32.39 per cent of the ASX by market capitalisation, which included companies such as Westpac, Telstra and Fortescue.
When did it become the job of an Australian corporation to publicise its endorsement of UN policies? It is not merely the hubris of individual Australian businesses approving the work of global bodies that grates. Their negligence is more vexing, especially if you're a shareholder.
I'm giving directors the benefit of the doubt that they have at least glanced at the list of Sustainable Development Goals. Each goal, taken as a stand-alone proposition, is an uplifting piety that no one could oppose. But you have to read past the headlines to see what is really going on. How sure are we that directors and chief executives have done this?
The fine print reveals the controversial stuff, the stuff that shareholders might well find hard to stomach – if they were told about it by directors and CEOs. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals have 169 targets attached to them, and each goal has a set of indicators to measure progress. Here the plot thickens.
Take goal five – to "achieve gender equality and empower women and girls". That's laudable. Except the UN's overview of this goal advocates legislated quotas for parliaments on the grounds that these are needed to "achieve equality in politics". If someone proposed legislating 50 per cent female-only seats in parliament, it would be an understatement to say that would be controversial. So why are companies making this their business?
It gets worse. To understand where goal five is headed, you have to read the underlying targets. Target 5.6 aims to "ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences".
Does this mean abortion on demand and at will? Late-term abortions? You have to read the Programme of Action and the Beijing Platform and their respective "outcome documents" to find out. How many corporations do you think have done their due diligence on that one before signing up?
The bigger question is why Australian corporations – big and small – need to get into these sorts of debates at all. Is this what shareholders pay them to do?
Global companies may argue their international scope justifies them spending shareholders' money on compliance with international law instruments dreamt up by unelected activists. But companies with exclusively domestic operations have enough to worry about in complying with Australian law – they shouldn't be wasting time and money on virtue-signalling international exotica.
Even more perplexing, some Australian companies are signing up to international instruments that are not just collections of banal platitudes. In some cases, they would, if implemented in Australia, damage Australian sovereignty and social harmony.
The UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which CBA and BHP say guides their approach, is the most striking example. This declaration demands the kind of co-sovereignty so resoundingly rejected by the Australian people in the recent voice referendum.
To illustrate, article three of this UN Declaration says "Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination" and by "virtue of that right they freely determine their political status". Article four gives indigenous peoples "in exercising their right to self-determination" the "right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs" – as well as the "ways and means for financing their autonomous functions". Article 14 gives indigenous peoples the "right to establish and control their education systems and institutions", while article 28 gives indigenous peoples the right to restitution or compensation for the loss of traditional lands.
Australians have enormous goodwill towards our Indigenous people and have been prepared to back up that goodwill with very significant taxpayer funds (not all of which, it must be admitted, has been well spent). However, the voice referendum as well as numerous High Court decisions make clear that Australians want, and have, an indivisible sovereignty, and equal civic rights for everyone.
The UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is precisely the kind of separatist international dogma that Australian corporations should recognise as anathema to Australians.
So why are Australian corporations diving into these debates? In many cases the answer, sadly, is negligence; each company, its management and board, is simply aping their peers without thinking about it.
Change is needed at several levels. First, corporate boards should stop signing up to the global agendas of international political activists – especially treaties that have no relevance to their corporate remit that they appear not to have read, certainly don't understand and appear to have done no due diligence on. These companies, their institutional shareholders and proxy advisers need to heed the warnings of the voice referendum and recent research from the Centre for Independent Studies showing a big majority of stakeholders just want their company to get out of politics. A backlash is coming; they need to stop politicising Australian business.
Second, the Australian Accounting Standards Board, which will promulgate the rules on sustainability reporting, needs to stick to its knitting and avoid mandating the wish list of global activists.
Finally, if all that fails, a new government – because it won't happen under the current one – needs to amend the Corporations Act to ensure accounting standards can't be used to implement, via a sneaky reporting back door, an elite global agenda increasingly detested by the average voter.
Time is nearly up on the hijacking of corporate Australia for political purposes. Boards – and governments – ignore the incoming tide at their peril."
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