“Is business getting the balance right between investor, customer and other stakeholder demands when it comes to ESG issues?” The question could have been loaded. But it wasn’t.

The questioner fired a blank and the business CEO being interviewed responded with a sad mush of brainwash.

The Australian newspaper runs a regular column called CEO Survey, where a CEO is interviewed about business issues and a condensed report is the output. This week the interviewee was Graham Chipchase of Brambles. Had a sharper interviewer so wished, the above question could have been posed inviting the CEO to consider that apart from customers and investors, there are no other stakeholders. That the CEO’s response clearly did not entertain such a notion, and since no follow up question was issued, or at least reported, it seems clear that neither interviewee or interviewer had any inkling that the concept of “stakeholder capitalism” is an example of language corrupted and used as a tool to achieve political activist objectives. Other examples of such corrupted language include social licence to operate, ESG, sustainable not to forget diversity, inclusion and equity.

Last year, I attended the annual general meeting (online) of the company South32, a large Australian headquartered public company of which I am a shareholder. At least I intended to attend. As it turns out, the affair was so ghastly that I had to drop out. The rot started very early on when the Chairman of the board introduced a person to deliver a welcome to country speech. Many readers will be familiar with how these speeches have been getting longer, more whiny, more aggressive and altogether more contemptuous than welcoming. Yet the Chairman enthusiastically approved as the whiner became more strident and eventually broke into a song, or a wailing chant as I heard it, and insisted on the audience of shareholders in attendance clap along in time. The Board Chairman led by example and shamed the other directors into joining in. The whole affair went on and on. By the time it was over, my respect for the welcome to country band and the Chairman of South32 had evaporated. To their credit, some directors squirmed in their chairs, clearly not happy with the proceedings.

At this years AGM of the ANZ Bank (of which I am an indirect rather than direct shareholder) a group of activists smuggled clown costumes in their bags into the event, changed in the toilets, and came back out to disrupt proceedings for an interminable period of time. Dressed in clown suits, with some doing clowinish acts, the Chief Clown delayed the business of the day with questions as to why the ANZ hasn’t publicly called for a ceasefire in Gaza and why is ANZ lending money to evil companies that process fossil fuels and other similar topics. Actually the Chief Clown title probably goes to the ANZ Chairman who, instead of immediately shutting down such annoying and disrespectful irrelevance, bent over backwards to accomodate the clowns, thank them for engaging in responsible discourse, kowtowing to them as if their views were relevant to the day the shareholders hold their directors to account. Moral relativism is on display both in the geopoliticial news from Israel and Palestine and in the annual general meeting of an Australian bank.

Back to the CEO of Brambles interviewed this week. In response to the question of getting the balance right, he replied with two illuminating points. First he said that “every stakeholder group needs to be considered … in a more integrated way.” Second, he said a business won’t succeed “if you are neglecting your social licence.” The CEO of Brambles and the Chairmen of ANZ and South32 display their capture by the notions antithetical to the foundations of a civil society that works to the benefit of all. These business leaders seem cowed by the threat of noisy activists with placards, cancel culture and the like such that they give in to it. Or perhaps they believe it. These are the only two possible explanations that I can come up with and neither is palatable. This rowdy disruptive irrelevant behaviour at board meetings is the stuff up with which a business leader should not put.

The foundations necessary for a civil society to grow and prosper are not a secret. They have been notably on display for centuries in certain countries, and notably absent from certain others. They are 1) the rule of law; 2) separation of powers; 3) no taxation without representation (ie an orderly regular means by which the people can elect their parliamentary representatives); 4) the protection of individual rights including property rights; 5) public faith in the society’s institutions charged with facilitating these foundations. There is little doubt that corporate Australia is damaging public faith. It is also working behind the scenes “co-operatively with Government and other stakeholders” to water down the means by which individual rights have been protected.

These business leaders should be reminding everyone that business has no business in questions of politics. They should remind people that political questions should be handled by Parliament and that the role of business is to make a profit. Only by making a profit can a business demonstrate that it is meeting the needs of both customers and investors.

Brace yourself for 2024. There is a wild ride coming up as the wave carrying public push-back against the forces of wokism gathers force.

I leave you with one aside – the inevitability of the rise of the term ‘woke’. It started to appear in language around 10 to 15 years ago and by now it is universal. Fascism means a co-opting of the public institutions, under the threat of violence, by an authoritarian governing power. Unlike communism, fascists felt no need to own the institutions, just the need to control them. The institutions so co-opted were the police, the media, the schools and universities, the banks, the arts and finally the law. People of the left of the political divide have used the term ‘fascist pig’ a lot to describe those they thought were the rich and powerful oppressors in society. In recent decades, it became increasingly obvious that the rich and powerful oppressors were actually those who previously liked to bandy the term ‘fascist’ around. Look around the world, most obviously on display in the pandemic period, and you will see left wing authoritarian governments imposing the harshest controls over the people using the institutions of the media, the banks, the police, the law etc. China, US Democrats, Canadian liberals, Australian and NZ Labor governments etc. Fascists calling others fascists only exposed the duplicity in that claim. A new word was needed to describe the feel-good public image of the left. Woke was the result. It originated from the left to describe themselves and enable the continued use of ‘fascist’ as a cultural weapon of war. However, it is now used more by the rest of us who find it useful to describe the forces, formerly called fascism, on display. Like most creations of the Left, it backfired.