South32 chair Karen Wood says find a better way to manage the coronavirus

One of Australia’s most powerful businesswomen has called on state governments to move faster on bringing down hard state borders.

South32 chair Karen Wood says find a better way to manage the coronavirus.

One of Australia’s most powerful businesswomen has called on state governments to move faster on bringing down hard state borders, with South32 chair Karen Wood saying Australia has to find a better way to manage the coronavirus than having “hard borders for hard border’s sakes”.

Speaking on the sidelines of South32’s annual shareholder meeting on Thursday Ms Wood, who spent two weeks in quarantine in Perth ahead of the shareholder meeting after travelling from Melbourne to attend, said Australia needed to look beyond hard state borders for a model to restrict the spread of the deadly disease.

“This thing is not going to go away, and we absolutely have to find a way to live with it that balances all of these positions that are put up as competing, but that ultimately can’t be – physical and mental health, and the economy,” she said.

“So it seems to me we’ve just got to find a practical way of identifying what you might describe as hot spots, areas where COVID-19 is a problem, and put appropriate restrictions in.”

South32 has operating mines and smelters in WA, Tasmania, Queensland, NSW and the Northern Territory, as well as operations scattered across the globe, and Ms Woods said she absolutely supported quarantine arrangements when travelling from regions where coronavirus was spreading in the community, as it was in Melbourne when she left.

“Protecting the community is obviously the way to go. But this thing is not going to follow hard borders, and we’ve just got to find a way to be able do our business. We’re in four states and the Northern Territory, not to mention our international assets,” she said.

“It’s incumbent on us all to find a way to get through this without just having hard borders for hard border’s sakes, but rather identifying those parts of the country that are problematic and put in place some restrictions.”

A second wake outbreak is gathering pace across Europe, threatening a broader economic recovery as France and Germany impose new lockdowns.

South32 chief executive Graham Kerr told shareholders the company expected uncertainty to surround its markets for some time to come, and has previously said coronavirus crisis had put the company’s key commodities – particularly alumina and base metals – under “extreme pressure” as China slowed down early in 2020 to deal with the pandemic.

“But while there are potentially second and third waves, I’m also confident we’ll find a way through how we manage this virus. And I do believe that governments will need to put people back to work, and that’s going to be a driver of infrastructure spending and demand for our commodities,” he told reporters after the meeting.

“So I think that in the medium to long term we are very well positioned.”

South32 saw a backlash against its remuneration report at its annual meeting, after proxy adviser ISS recommended a vote against its pay packet over concerns the company’s short term incentive packages for the year failed to reflect the hit holders had taken on the South32 share price over the year.

The vote fell short of the 25 per cent threshold for a “first strike”, but more than 20 per cent of shares were voted against its remuneration report and against the grant of short term incentive rewards to Mr Kerr.

Ms Wood said South32’s board remained comfortable its executive bonus schemes were appropriate for the long term, but said the company’s remuneration committee would take the backlash into consideration.

“Whenever you get a recommendation like that you have to take it on board and have a look at whether the scheme is doing what it should do. I would say the outcomes we did see this year were given very careful consideration by the remuneration committee in the first instance and then the board” she said.

“We did reduce the short term incentive outcomes for Graham Kerr by 30 per cent as a reflection of the shareholder experience given the pricing. We also put in place this year a cap on the long term incentives that might vest under the 2021 financial year grant to make sure we didn’t get a windfall gain flowing from the lower base price for the year.”

South32 shares closed down 7c to $2.05 on Thursday.