Making a stand ‘not virtue signalling’

Citi Australia chairwoman Sam Mostyn has rejected the notion that big companies are ‘virtue signalling’ on social issues.

Citi Australia chairwoman Sam Mostyn has rejected the notion that big companies are “virtue signalling” when they support same-sex marriage or indigenous issues but are reluctant to call for unpopular changes such as lower corporate tax rates to foster economic growth.

The prominent director, who also sits on the boards of Mirvac, Transurban, Virgin and the Sydney Swans, said employees wanted executives to support issues that mattered to them and customers, while an erosion of community trust has made it harder for business to call for tax cuts.

At the The Australian and BHP Competitive Advantage Forum in Sydney yesterday, Ms Mostyn said whether boards supported tax cuts or social campaigns was not a binary issue.

“We look at the entire community, what the tax system should be doing, what it should be rewarding and how we behave within that,” she said.

“Whether it’s marriage equality, climate change, gender, domestic violence, these aren’t ‘virtue signalling’, these are the issues that matter to the people who work for us and the people who buy our products and services.”

The Virgin director defended Qantas chief Alan Joyce’s vocal support of same-sex marriage and cited an Edelman Trust survey that said 70 to 80 per cent of Australian employees thought their chief executives should speak up on social issues that affected the prospects of the company.

“You might say that’s what led Alan Joyce at Qantas to talk about the marriage equality debate,” Ms Mostyn said.

“He wasn’t just responding to an issue he has grabbed out of the air and thought was interesting,” she said.

“He was responding to the interest of his employees, the interest of his customers and taking a considered view, together with his board, about
the place of the Qantas brand on that matter and went and did
that in a way that was quite clear about why he was doing it, and
his employees supported that,” Ms Mostyn said.

She said a lack of community trust in big corporations had led to muted support for tax cuts and the inability for business to argue
its case.

“In an environment where Australians don’t trust big corporates and think executives are getting away with too much money, it’s going to be a very brave company today in the current politic and the current politicisation and activism to stand up and call for a tax cut,” Ms Mostyn said.

Another reason to talk up corporate values was the changing nature of the workforce.

She said up to half the Australian workforce was set to be made up of “generation Y and generation Z”, or those born from the early 1980s to the mid-2000s.

“That talent pool for our organisations, whether we’re companies or not-for-profits or what we are, actually treat values of the organisation as one of the No 1 principles by which they will come and work for you,” Ms Mostyn said.