SIX (Sustainable Investment Exchange)’s Post

Three multinational-owned companies exploit and pollute Macquarie Harbour while paying no taxes, backed by the foreign funded lobby group Salmon Tasmania, but somehow our group of 120+ Australian shareholders are ‘potentially affecting national sovereignty’ by trying to stop an extinction? Australia has some of the least democratic rules in the world when it comes to shareholder participation in the companies that we own. It is so difficult for shareholders to propose an advisory resolution in Australia that a single US company, Amazon, had 6 times as many shareholder resolutions in 2023 as the entire ASX. 100 shareholders working together isn’t a ‘loophole’, it’s an almost impossibly high benchmark required for one of the most basic of shareholder rights. There’s nothing sneaky about it, SIX has a mission to make the corporate world more democratic. It’s behind a paywall, so here’s my quotes from Summer Liu’s article in The Australian today. Link to the article is in the comments. “SIX co-founder and chief executive Adam Verwey said the laws were strict enough already, and any further restrictions would be “completely undemocratic” and endanger the safety of Aus­tralians. “If shareholders didn’t have the right to propose resolutions, then Johnson & Johnson would likely still be selling cancer-causing talc powders, and Dunkin’ Donuts would still be sprinkling titanium dioxide on their doughnuts,” he said. “(Salmon Tasmania) is a lobby group that is good at pretending they are representing Tasmanians while actually representing the ­financial interests of the three multinational companies that operate industrial salmon farms in Tasmania. “If you want to see who is profiting from the potential extinction of the Maugean skate, you should be looking at Coles, Woolworths, and the three multinational companies operating salmon farms in Macquarie Harbour.” Mr Verwey said Australia was more conservative on its shareholder resolution laws ­compared to “almost all Western countries”, which gave individual shareholders the right to propose an advisory resolution to a company’s annual general meeting. “Given this is so normal everywhere else in the world, why are Australian companies flipping out about the prospect of receiving an occasional shareholder resolution,” he said. A Treasury spokesman said that “through routine stakeholder engagement (we have) not heard concerns within the corporate community regarding the operation of other provisions with the 100-member rule”.” SIX (Sustainable Investment Exchange) Ekō Anisha Humphreys Kelly Roebuck Environment Tasmania Ethinvest Blair Palese Trevor Thomas Tas Ethical Ethical Investment Funds Management