Corporate virtue won’t save the banks now

NOW that the unethical and dishonest behaviour of our banks has been exposed at the royal commission we see how empty their so-called “corporate social responsibility” rhetoric is, writes Miranda Devine.

JUDGING by the revelations at the banking royal commission, corporate Australia should have stuck to its knitting instead of expending vast amounts of money and energy on vacuous virtue-signalling.

Now that we’ve seen the unethical, irresponsible, and the downright dishonest behaviour in banks and other financial institutions exposed at the royal commission we see exactly how empty their so-called “corporate social responsibility” rhetoric is.

Instead of executives at Westpac, the Commonwealth Bank, and AMP creating a corporate culture of ethical and honourable behaviour, they focused outside their field of expertise on fashionable issues such as “climate responsibility” and gender diversity.

They authorised human resources departments to run rampant on “diversity and inclusion”, rather than on fostering prudence and integrity in organisations entrusted with other people’s money.

While CEOs were posing as moral arbiters, writing open letters demanding the government legislate same-sex marriage, their companies were ripping people off.

Nurse Jacqueline McDowall told the royal commission last week how she and her truckdriver husband lost their family home and their retirement dream of owning a bed and breakfast business after taking dodgy financial advice from Westpac. Westpac scored tens of thousands of dollars from them in fees, commissions and unnecessary insurance premiums.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s Marianne Perkovic at the banking royal commission in Melbourne. (Pic: Stuart McEvoy)

McDowall says she and her husband are now renting and will have to work until they are in “a wheelchair or a Zimmer frame”.

Then, there was Commonwealth Bank executive Marianne Perkovic who admitted to the royal commission that her bank was still charging fees to clients knowing they had died, in one instance, ten years earlier.

And AMP admitted lying to the corporate regulator ASIC on 20 separate occasions.

The financial misconduct revealed so far is astonishing for banks whose risk is underwritten by the taxpayer by as much as $4 billion per year.

Australian banking executives are among the highest paid in the world, with annual salaries between $5 million and $12 million.

Maybe they virtue signal because they feel guilty about being paid so much. Is the work done by Westpac CEO Brian Hartzer’s really 110 times more valuable than the work of a nurse humiliated by his bank?

There is nothing wrong with making lots of money. That’s the capitalist system. What’s wrong is pretending that you’re not in the business of making lots of money but in the business of being a social engineer.

It was in the same sex-marriage debate that the financial institutions and most of the big corporates really overstepped the mark, campaigning publicly for the ‘Yes’ campaign, pressuring politicians, evangelising their workplaces, and in some cases bullying dissenting employees.

This pressure at work made ‘No’ voters worry about their job security, which is why

NSW Labor MLC Greg Donnelly sent letters on behalf of those concerned employees last year to more than 100 CEOs who had signed up to the ‘Yes’ campaign.

He received no assurances that dissenters would be safe.

But the responses tell you everything you need to know about the priorities of corporate Australia, and none were more politically correct than the banks now humbled before the royal commission.

The Commonwealth Bank was typical: “We participate in Male Champions of Change to promote gender equality, anti-domestic violence programs and cultural harmony and inclusion programs, which are all important to our business”.

But ANZ’s Chief human resources officer Susie Babani excelled with her response on behalf of CEO Shayne Elliott: “we believe in the inherent strength of a vibrant diverse and inclusive workforce where the backgrounds, perspectives and life experiences of our people help us to forge strong connections with all our customers, innovate and make better decisions for our business. The inclusion of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered and Intersex (LGBTI) customers and staff is an important part of that work, as is our focus on gender, ethnicity, culture, language, education, disability, age, family-relationship status, socio-economic background and religious beliefs.”

No wonder there’s no time for the knitting.

ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott. (Pic: David Moir)

But there’s more babble from Babani!

“Our diversity and inclusion approach is underpinned by a strong suite of people systems, processes and policies, and we have a range of initiatives to support diversity. These include targets for women in management, people with self-disclosed disabilities and traineeships for indigenous Australians … We are the principal partner of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, a founding member of the Diversity Council of Australia, a member of Pride in Diversity and the Australian Network on Disability.”

Westpac and even the prudential regulator APRA had drunk the same Kool-Aid, judging by their replies to Donnelly.

Of course, the big four banks and AMP, which have been shamed at the royal commission, are all signed up members of the Diversity Council, the outfit that tried to ban words like guys, and mum and dad.

And they all have been named “an employer of choice for gender equality” by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency.

Corporate virtue-signalling is what they do best. But the problem is that it’s inherently fraudulent. No one believes in it. It doesn’t make the world a better place. It’s a waste of resources. It empowers busybody radicals, and ultimately it diverts the organisation from doing a good and honourable job of its core business.

The best outcome of the royal commission would be for these big companies to axe their HR departments and give the money they save to the victims of their malfeasance. That would be real corporate social responsibility.