Former Labor bigwig Keith DeLacy takes aim at ALP’s anti-business stance

He might be a former Labor government treasurer, but that’s not going to stop this accomplished politician from taking aim at the party’s anti-business stance and at social activism in the boardroom.

FORMER Labor treasurer Keith DeLacy has taken a swipe at his former party colleagues for running a “hostile, anti-business agenda” during the last federal election.

Mr DeLacy, who was last night awarded Queensland’s Australian Institute of Company Directors gold medal for his service on the boards of a number of high-profile firms, warned that the ideological opponents of the private sector and free markets continued to gather strength with companies being hijacked by social activists.

“We have just completed an election where one party campaigned on a hostile anti-business agenda,” said Mr DeLacy, who served as state Labor treasurer between 1989 and 1996.

“They didn’t win but the point is it would not have even been conceivable to even run a campaign like that 20 years ago.”

After leaving politics in 1998, Mr DeLacy served as chairman of Ergon Energy, Macarthur Coal, Queensland Sugar, Cubbie Group and as a director of Queensland Investment Corporation and Queensland Energy Resources. He remains a director of Reef Casino Trust.

Keith DeLacy (right) pictured in 2009 with the late Labor premier Wayne Goss.

Mr DeLacy told a gala dinner in Brisbane in his honour on Thursday that while there had been times where business performance had been less than perfect, including the misdeeds exposed during the recent Royal Commission into banking, the negative perception was overstated.

“The vast majority of businesses in Australia under the guidance of their boards act ethically and competently and as good as anywhere in the world,” he said.

But Mr DeLacy said he had never seen business held in such low regard, with more than half the Australian people seeing the sector as the enemy.

“Taking cheap shots at business is par for the course from the mainstream media, social media, political circles, the public, social activists and so the list goes on,” he said.

Mr DeLacy also took aim at social activism in corporate life, with some banks and others engaged in “virtue signalling” on issues such as climate change and diversity.

He said it aggravated him when companies used the status of their company to push the social causes of the day. “If you must get into the political arena, stick to your knitting, argue for good economic policy, policy settings that are good for business, productivity growth and help expand the economy,” he said.

Mr DeLacy with Macarthur Coal’s Ken Talbot in 2001.

He said in his opinion Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce had wrongly used the airline’s name to push the ‘yes’ case in last year’s referendum on same sex marriage.

“It is all right for Mr Joyce to have his own opinion but not to appropriate the Qantas name to support it,” said Mr DeLacy.

He said similarly Gillette’s “toxic masculinity” advertising campaign earlier this year had backfired when it was criticised for labelling all men as bullies and thugs. “They (Gillette) forgot that most of their customers were men,” said Mr DeLacy.

He said at the shareholder level an unprecedented number of company annual general meetings had been “invaded’ by people with social, as opposed to commercial, agendas.

“They are having a real impact,” he said. “BHP was hijacked at their AGM a couple of years ago by an activist group called the Australian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR) demanding that the company withdraw its membership of the Minerals Council of Australia.

“My message to BHP … is that social media or noisy activists don’t provide a reliable compass to guide mainstream business through difficult times.

Keith De Lacy at his Brisbane home this week. (AAP Image/Attila Csaszar)

“Some of the banks decided to do their own virtue signalling too, announcing they would no longer finance new fossil fuel projects. A fat lot of good that did them in the public eye.”

Mr DeLacy said that unlike many modern politicians he was never a career politician and before entering parliament had been a tobacco farmer, underground tin miner, agricultural officer in Papua New Guinea, agricultural college principal, and newsagent.

“I spent a considerable time in what is now referred to as the real world, dirt under the fingers as it were,” he said. “In fact my job in Papua New Guinea was the first time I had to turn up for work in ironed trousers.”