Harvey Norman shareholder activists show the danger of the woke agenda

Harvey Norman CEO Katie Page should be a pin-up to everyone who demands more women in the boardroom. Instead, a rogue group is trying to oust her, writes Peta Credlin.

Harvey Norman boss Katie Page should be a pin-up girl to everyone who demands more women in the boardroom.

She not just a successful female CEO, she’s a successful CEO full stop with Harvey Norman’s earnings more than double other corporates on the benchmark list of Australia’s top 200 companies.

As if this wasn’t enough, she’s also taken on additional roles in sports administration, like the NRL board, and created the hugely successful Magic Millions — a racing and thoroughbred sales event on the Gold coast each January. In all of this, she’s NEVER, played the gender card. She’s just got on with the job, done it exceedingly well, and more than held her own in a male dominated field.

Along with the company’s co-founder and chairman (and Page’s husband too — Gerry Harvey) they have both been outspoken about the epidemic of politically-correct box-ticking, now required, of public companies. So, enter the activists.

A mob called “Ownership Matters” — a proxy firm – is trying to replace Katie Page with professional corporate agitator, Stephen Mayne, on the Harvey Norman board at the company AGM later this month.

Harvey Norman CEO Katie Page. Picture: John Feder/The Australian

These proxy firms are a nasty new pest wreaking havoc on business. They invite small shareholders to assign to them their proxies, and then try to turn public company AGMs into town hall debates about climate change, gender equality, or bringing boat people to Australia.

Proxy firms mobilising activist shareholders, and often working with industry super funds, are driving divestment in coal mines and corporate backing for culture war issues that most ordinary investors have no interest in.

Page, of course, is not one of these bland, boring, gutless business bureaucrats. She’s a tough, self-confident fighter who’s more than capable of giving better than she gets.

Other business leaders might be weak, and we’ve seen them roll over in the face of these activist campaigns, not so I predict, Katie Page.

I admire her enormously; she’s smart as a whip and a country girl who calls a spade a shovel. I don’t think these activists have any idea just the sort of leader they’ve picked a fight with this time.

Originally published as Harvey Norman shareholder activists show the danger of the woke agenda