Has Trump’s war on woke changed Australia’s ‘tech bros’? It’s complicated
US tech supremos have aligned themselves with the US president. Mike Cannon-Brookes, the climate activist with a private jet and an F1 partnership, says he’s steadfast.
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Mike Cannon-Brookes hasn’t been to the US “for a while” and he may not recognise it when he returns as companies pull back on their environment and diversity targets amid political pressure under Donald Trump’s second administration.
The Atlassian billionaire who is also the biggest shareholder of utility AGL Energy said his “commitment to climate is as strong as ever” and is “pretty damn focused on making an impact at a large scale”.
But since Trump returned to power on January 20, the US president signed a flurry of executive orders, from banning further wind farm development to forcing an end to corporate diversity, equity and inclusion programs. He has even ended a US government effort to replace plastic straws with paper ones.
Many of Silicon Valley’s most powerful people attended Trump’s inauguration and have participated in a lurch to the cultural right as they align themselves with the new mood in Washington, DC.
Already, Google has abandoned its diversity and inclusion hiring targets to comply with Trump’s executive order. Facebook founder and Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has been pursuing his own ‘Make America Great Again’ makeover, scrapping fact-checking on his social media platforms to better fit in with one of Trump’s most ardent supporters, Elon Musk.
As for Mr Musk himself – when he’s not relishing his role of cost-cutter-in-chief, heading the new Department of Government Efficiency – he may have finally convinced Trump to buy a Tesla, after parking a Cybertruck on the White House lawn last week.
Australian tech entrepreneur Adrian Di Marco – founder of Brisbane-based TechnologyOne – said Trump’s war on woke is a “wake-up call” for Australia and America will become more competitive under Trump’s policies.
Where does this leave Mr Cannon-Brookes? Although he is based in the NSW Southern Highlands, running his Atlassian software empire largely from Australia, it is a Nasdaq-listed company and has to comply with US Securities and Exchange Commission rules. Trump signed another executive order last month reining in traditional independent agencies, including the SEC.
Mr Cannon-Brookes, in a 20-minute conversation last week, doesn’t weigh into Trump’s politics and the rise of the “tech bros”.
“We just focus on what we can control, what’s in front of us,” he told The Australian.
Mr Cannon-Brookes shares some common ground with Trump; Atlassian is the new title partner of beleaguered F1 team Williams. The US President attended the Daytona 500 NASCAR race three weeks ago.
The Williams sponsorship appears, at first glance, at odds with Mr Cannon-Brookes’ commitment to combating climate change, one of the tenets of his stake in AGL which he once described as one of the most toxic companies on the planet, and invested in with a view to accelerating its decarbonisation.
The billionaire said he can appreciate the “double take”. After all “cars = fuel”.
He has also bought a jet, acknowledging that private aviation is “a carbon-intensive way to travel” but a necessity for him, citing personal security while also allowing him to continue to run Atlassian – a global business worth $US54.19bn ($86.19bn) from Australia.
“We can’t sort of stop doing things tomorrow,” Mr Cannon-Brookes said.
Transitioning carbon intensive industries and tasks takes time, he adds.
For example, Atlassian operates data centres, which are known for their power intensity. But Mr Cannon-Brookes said the company was making solid process to achieving its goal of net zero by 2040, and had released a ‘Don’t #@! % the Planet’ guide to encourage other businesses to do the same.
“We run a lot of servers at Atlassian. We have to deliver products to our customers, turning off those servers isn’t going to help those customers.
‘We need a plan to be able to run those servers in an effective way, improving every year … That’s what our sustainability plan is all about.
“Atlassian has always been set up as a long-term company. We talk about sustainability, we want to be here in 10–20 years. That means we need our staff to be there, human rights are important, and if you look at our sustainability report, it means the communities we exist in, the cities, the areas that support us as a business, and it means the planet.”
Mr Cannon-Brookes is impressed with F1’s plan to tackle climate change. In 2019, it produced more than 256,551 tonnes of carbon emissions, about half of which came from logistics, and almost 28 per cent from business travel.
Since then, it has cut its emissions by about 100,000 tonnes.
“In terms of difficult to abate sectors, transportation is not the most difficult set of sectors. I mean because of the progress we have had in electric vehicles, electric engines, battery power, sustainable fuels – all these sorts of things don’t happen without people pushing forward, being exemplars.”
As for Williams, “I’m not sure if they’re the best in F1, but certainly at the top of the top of the grid, in terms of their (sustainability) plans,” he said.
“Next year’s car now is half electric, so it makes a huge difference. And secondly, obviously the fuel they use is pure sustainable fuel.
“They’re really pushing that. There’s people working really hard. They’ve got clear plans, they’ve got clear objectives, and we sign up for that the same way.”
F1 doesn’t really have a climate problem, according to Airtasker founder and chief executive Tim Fung.
“First of all, it’s 20 cars buzzing around. That’s not going to be creating an actual emissions problem. You’ve got millions of cars on the road in Australia. That’s not going to be a drag on F1,” said Mr Fung, who has also sponsored a team to facilitate his US expansion plans.
He is “less political” about sustainability goals.
“We generally stay out of politics. We stand for helping create jobs for people,” Mr Fung said.
Mr Di Marco – who founded TechnologyOne in a hide processing plant in Brisbane in the 1980s, setting it up to become a $9bn company – disagrees that the new temperature in DC is complicated for climate.
“Trump is in the White House, and whether you love him or hate him, he started a whole new movement which is going to continue, and it won’t stop with Trump,” Mr Di Marco said.
“It’s a wake-up call. America is going to become very efficient, very effective. They’re going to put their country first, and unless it’s in their interest, they’re not going to play ball. So we have to get efficient and effective across the board – with our energy policies, with the way that public companies operate to make our industries competitive.”
Originally published as Has Trump’s war on woke changed Australia’s ‘tech bros’? It’s complicated
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