Has Trump’s war on woke changed Australia’s ‘tech bros’? It’s complicated
Most of America’s big tech bosses have begun lurching to the right as they align themselves with the US president. Has Mike Cannon-Brookes changed too as he backs F1 and buys a private jet?
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Mike Cannon-Brookes says he hasn’t been to the US “for a while”. And he may not recognise it when he returns as companies pull back on their environment and diversity targets amid political pressure from Donald Trump’s reascension.
Cannon-Brookes says his “commitment to climate is as strong as ever” and is “pretty damn focused on making an impact at a large scale”.
But since Trump returned to power on January 20, he has signed a flurry of executive orders, from banning further wind farm developments to forcing an end to diversity, equity and inclusion programs. He has even ended a US government effort to replace plastic straws with paper.
Most of America’s big tech bosses attended Trump’s inauguration and have begun lurching to the right as they align themselves with the US president.
Already, Google has abandoned its diversity and inclusion hiring targets to comply with Trump’s executive order. Facebook founder and Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has been pursuing his own ‘Make America Great Again’ makeover, scrapping fact-checking on his social media platforms to better fit in with one of Trump’s most ardent supporters Elon Musk.
As for Musk himself – when he’s not relishing his role of cost-cutter-in-chief, heading the new Department of Government Efficiency – he may have finally convinced Trump to buy a Tesla, after parking a Cybertruck and another four of his company’s vehicles on the White House lawn this week.
Australian tech entrepreneur Adrian Di Marco – founder of Brisbane-based TechnologyOne – says Trump’s war on woke is a “wake up call” for Australia and America will become more competitive from Trump’s policies.
But where does this leave Cannon-Brookes? Although he is based in NSW Southern Highlands, running his Atlassian software empire largely from Australia, it is a Nasdaq-listed, or American company. It has to comply with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and Trump signed another executive order last month reining in traditional independent agencies – including the SEC.
During our 20 minute conversation, Cannon-Brookes doesn’t weigh into Trump’s politics and the rise of the US “tech bros”.
“We just focus on what we can control, what’s in front of us,” Cannon-Brookes tells The Australian.
But he may have some common ground with Trump. The US president attended the Daytona 500 NASCAR race three weeks ago, performing a few laps of the circuit in his motorcade.
Cannon-Brookes has a passion for motorsport too, with Atlassian becoming the new title partner of beleaguered F1 team Williams.
The sponsorship initially appears at odds with Cannon-Brookes commitment to combating climate change, and the billionaire says he can appreciate the “double take”. After all “cars = fuel”, fossil fuel.
He has also bought a jet, acknowledging that private aviation is “a carbon-intensive way to travel” but a necessity for him, citing personal security while also allowing him to continue to run Atlassian – which has become a global business worth $US54.19bn ($86.19bn) from Australia. So could this represent the ground starting to shift in Australia?
It’s complicated.
“We can’t sort of stop doing things tomorrow,” Cannon-Brookes says.
Transitioning carbon intensive industries and task, takes time, he adds, and more crucially a plan that aligns with business goals.
In regards to Atlassian, it operates data centres, which are known for being power hungry. But Cannon-Brookes said the company was making solid process to achieving net zero by 2040, and had released a ‘Don’t #@! % the Planet’ guide to encourage other businesses to do the same.
“We run a lot of servers at Atlassian. We have to deliver products to our customers, turning off those servers isn’t going to help those customers.
‘We need a plan to be able to run those servers in an effective way, improving every year and sort of moving through a plan. That’s what our sustainability plan is all about.
“Atlassian has always been set up as a long-term company. We talk about sustainability, we want to be here in 10-20 years. That means we need our staff to be there, human rights are important, and if you look at our sustainability report, it means the communities we exist in, the cities, the areas that support us as a business, and it means the planet.”
Cannon Brookes says he is also impressed with F1’s plan to tackle climate change. In 2019, it produced more than 256,551 tonnes of carbon emissions, about half of which came from logistics, while almost 28 per cent was from business travel.
But since then, it has cut its emissions by about 100,000 tonnes and has vowed to get to net zero by the end of the decade.
“In terms of difficult to abate sectors, transportation is not the most difficult set of sectors. I mean because of the progress we have had in electric vehicles, electric engines, battery power, sustainable fuels – all these sorts of things don’t happen without people pushing forward, being exemplars.”
Cannon-Brookes says this is why he partnered with Williams. “I’m not sure if they’re the best in F1, but certainly at the top of the top of the grid, in terms of their (sustainability) plans,” he said.
“Next year’s car now is half electric, so it makes a huge difference. And secondly, obviously the fuel they use is pure sustainable fuel
“They’re really pushing that. There’s people working really hard. They’ve got clear plans, they’ve got clear objectives, and we sign up for that the same way.”
Other Aussie tech titans, such as Airtasker founder and chief executive Tim Fung, says F1 doesn’t really have a climate problem.
“First of all, it’s 20 cars buzzing around. That’s not going to be creating an actual emissions problem. You’ve got millions of cars on the road in Australia. That’s not going to be a drag on F1,” says Fung, who has also sponsored an F1 team to accelerate his US expansion plans.
He says he is “less political” about sustainability goals.
“We generally stay out of politics. We stand for helping create jobs for people,” Fung says.
“The thing I love about F1 is at every level it’s celebrating humans involved with technology.
“They create a lot of the technologies that they end up using in road cars and in other areas. Some of that stuff is insanely high tech. Like, the battery storage, curve systems, taking all the braking energy in a wheel and pumping that back into a battery so that you can deploy it. They’ve gamified that, which is really cool.”
Adrian Di Marco – who founded TechnologyOne in a hide processing plant in Brisbane in the 1980s, setting it up to become a $9.02bn company – is more direct when asked about the Trump effect.
“Trump is in the White House, and whether you love him or hate him, he started a whole new movement which is going to continue, and it won’t stop with Trump,” Di Marco says.
“In Australia, we can bleat about it all day long and try to ignore it, but it’s not going to go away. You have to accept it as the new norm, whether you like it or not, and stop being lazy and complacent and become more productive and more resilient.
“It’s a wake up call. America is going to become very efficient, very effective. They’re going to put their country first, and unless it’s in their interest, they’re not going to play ball. So we have to get efficient and effective across the board – with our energy policies, with the way that public companies operate to make our industries competitive.”
Originally published as Has Trump’s war on woke changed Australia’s ‘tech bros’? It’s complicated
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