They chose the government/union supported Yes side of the debate, which pitched concentrated Australian capital power against the views of 60 per cent of Australians and the main Opposition party.
In all, 11 major listed companies contributed around $20m and represented some of our biggest brands including Woolworths, Bunnings, Kmart, Telstra, Lend Lease, plus of course, the big banks – CBA, Westpac and ANZ.
NAB did use shareholders money but instead their wonderful charitable trust, the NAB Foundation, donated $1.3m – almost equal to its combined community charity donations over the last two years.
Qantas was not on the top donor list but spent $370,000 on its public support for the Yes campaign by painting the logo onto three planes, as well as providing flights for officials involved in the Yes campaign.
It’s perfectly legitimate for individual directors who believed in the Yes case to use their own money to add to the Yes coffers. . But they used shareholders funds to promote a personal view and in the process thrust the company into a political arena which for some threatens to be costly if the current opposition becomes government and there is an issue where the company needs government support.
But the dangers created by the boards playing politics go much further. For example, while Woolworths is not a top 10 listed company, the National Party wants Woolworths broken up.
The Woolworths decision to play politics against the Nationals will not help. Woolworths can be thankful Coles kept their shareholders’ money in the pocket, so there was no collusion.
But there was unity among the banks, with Westpac and Commonwealth both chipping in $2m. For some reason, the ANZ payment went up to $2.5m.
But former NAB chief executive Ross McEwan baulked at spending shareholders money on political campaigning. However, the NAB Foundation, which was once the MLC Foundation, donated. The NAB Foundation is a wonderful body that distributes small donations around the nation. It has about $100m in assets, but the $1.3m donation to play politics was totally out of its normal giving pattern. There are no NAB people on its board.
It is conceivable that eventually the Woolworths break up pressure may extend to banks. For all four of the banks to come together to play politics was politically stupid and potentially could be dangerous if an opposition campaigning for small enterprises and families comes to power.
If the decision to donate was made before it was apparent that the donation would be political, then it should have been matched by a similar donation to the No campaign
And why would great brands like Bunnings and K Mart via Wesfarmers want to get mixed up in politics, pushing views that were almost certainly different to their customers?
I don’t know the forces that caused this, but Wesfarmers chairman Michael Chaney was of the strongest corporate public advocates for a Yes vote. His former CEO Richard Goyder was chairman of Woodside, which contributed $2.2m. Goyder’s other public company chairmanship was Qantas.
Goyder is also chairman of the AFL, which also supported the Yes case. His replacement as Qantas chairman is John Mullen, who at the time was chairman of Telstra, which contributed $1m.
Because playing politics in a referendum was not a good idea, people love to link such actions to government rewards. There is usually no connection, but in the case of Qantas, the rumour mill had the Qantas Yes campaign support linked to Qatar Airways being blocked from expanding its flights to Australia. In the case of the AFL Yes support, almost certainly unfairly, was linked to Commonwealth aid for the Hobart stadium.
Two companies that did claim a logical reason for contributing to the Yes campaign were BHP and Rio Tinto, where Aboriginal land rights influence their mining, so it became a relationship issue.
But Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group refused to join Rio Tinto and BHP in backing the Yes vote.
Executive director Elizabeth Gaines said at the time that Fortescue would continue with a “hand up, not hand out” approach to helping Aboriginal communities
“Our approach is to really focus on practical initiatives that we know make long and lasting differences”. Forrest and Gaines got it right.
The Liberal Party has seen itself as the party of the large corporates. But the corporate giants turned to the ALP when the referendum chips were down and many Liberals now know they will have to learn, Robert Menzies/John Howard style, how to relate to small family enterprises, who these days are often operated by females. The old style Liberals, who enjoy the cocktail set rather than the barbecue, will not always find it easy.
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In a power concentration danger sign for Australia, seven of our largest 10 listed companies combined forces to arrange a total contribution of around $17m to one side of the intense political debate in the voice referendum.