Incoming Qantas chair questions corporate support for voice referendum

Corporate Australia’s support for the indigenous voice campaign ‘backfired’, with businesses seen by the public as ‘high and mighty’, according to incoming Qantas chair John Mullen.

Incoming Qantas chair John Mullen. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Aaron Francis

Corporate Australia’s strong support for the indigenous voice campaign had “backfired”, with businesses being seen by the public as “high and mighty” and telling people what they should do, according to the incoming chairman of Qantas, John Mullen.

Mr Mullen, a former chair of Telstra, takes over as chair of the airline in July from Richard Goyder.

Speaking at a corporate lunch in Sydney on Thursday, he said corporate Australia needed to learn a lesson from what happened from the strong support for the voice by some companies.

“In retrospect, the broader business community was seen by a lot of people in Australia as high and mighty and telling us what we should do,” he told The Australian in additional comments after the lunch.

Qantas was one of the strongest corporate supporters of the voice, with former chief executive Alan Joyce hosting a corporate event showing his company’s support for the referendum with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and indigenous leader, former AFL player Adam Goodes.

Qantas’ support for the voice included putting decals on the side of some planes saying “Yes”.

Other companies including Telstra and Woolworths were also strong public supporters of the voice.

Mr Mullen, who is also chair of pallet company Brambles and Treasury Wine Estate, told the lunch that companies could find themselves in a difficult position if they supported a specific cause which was backed by the ruling political party and the government of the day then changed.

Qantas put its support for the voice referendum on the side of some of its aircraft. Picture: Qantas

He said corporate Australia had “done itself a bit of a disservice” with the way it had strongly supported the voice.

“The way that corporate Australia went about supporting it was detrimental to the image of corporate Australia in the eyes of many people,” he said.

Mr Mullen said company leaders could “not stay anaesthetised and separate to what is going on in the world”.

But he said it was “dangerous if you get too involved in this or that social cause”.

A veteran company director, Mr Mullen said that life had changed considerably for companies during his corporate career, from the early days when their sole role was to make as much profit as possible for shareholders.

“In my working life, it started with complete shareholder primacy,” he said.

“You walked over women and children and babies to deliver shareholder returns.

“The whole move to greater stakeholder involvement has been dramatic.

“Now corporates are faced with an increasingly populist world.”

He said getting the balance right on these issues was one of the big challenges for leaders of corporate Australia today.

Mr Mullen said he was “raising the question of how involved” companies should get in social causes. He said he did not agree with the idea that companies should not get involved at all in any social issues of the day.

“But the other end, to get involved in every social cause, can do a lot of damage,” he said.

“It is about getting that balance right which is not easy.”

Mr Mullen told The Australian that Telstra had supported the voice when he was chairman but other companies he was involved with at the time had chosen not to get involved.

“In retrospect, when we look back, we could have positioned it (support for the voice) less dictatorially and telling people what they should do and engage and encouraged debate.”

He said if a company chose to get involved in a social issue it should seek to “explain and understand the views of both sides”.

He said this would lead to “a more reasonable outcome than when you take one staunch view that steamrollers through the opposition.”