It’s Time to Push Back Against ‘ESG’

The Woke Masters of the Universe are emperors who not only have no clothes, they’re waving their dicks in our faces and telling us there’s nothing to see. As the PwC scandal in Australia shows, global corporations can wave as many Pride flags as they can buy, but pandering to so-called “ESG” (“Environmental and Social Governance”) means nothing when they still refuse to abide by old-fashioned business ethics.

In fact, it’s fast becoming the rule that the louder the ESG virtue-signalling, the less ethical a company really is.

The PwC website positively glows with social virtue.

The Australian

“Committed to Net Zero by 2030.” “Our inclusion networks.” “First Nations cultural leave policy.” “Empowering LGBTIQ+ talent.”

Conspicuously absent is their “not peddling government secrets to help our friends dodge taxes” policy.

In May, a cache of internal firm emails published by a Senate committee showed dozens of PwC partners and staff received emails relating to a plan to exploit, for profit, information Mr Collins had gleaned while advising the government on developing the multinational tax avoidance laws.

The emails, which had names redacted, also detailed how PwC’s personnel used the leaked intelligence from the former partner to advise 14 clients how to sidestep new multinational tax avoidance laws in 2016, charging fees worth $2.5 million in the process

Australian Financial Review

All the rainbow buttons and “diversity” they can sprinkle on themselves can’t hide their corruption and greed. But it can buy the loyalty of the supposedly anti-capitalist left.

“Woke capitalism” has achieved a significant profile for a service sector that used to be mostly interested in profit. It still is. But the way to realise pecuniary advantage is to embrace the fuzzy feel-goodism of a left that used to march against capitalism.

No more. Increasingly, progressives use business to expand their campus hegemony to the boardroom. And businesses seem to love it. Rainbow and climate capitalism have become an elaborate set of conventions governing their marketing and investment strategies. Diversity and inclusion officers now have real power in the companies Australians rely on to build their supers.

And they use that power to use working peoples’ money to push climate and energy policies that hit working people hardest.

Last month I addressed a large conference on “responsible investing” in Melbourne. These men and women make the investment decisions that can make the difference between a retirement of scarcity or of repose. A scan of the booths outside the main auditorium revealed a corporate preoccupation with the ideological totems of the modern left: net zero, LGBTQI+, the voice, anti-racism, antislavery, pro-refugee. You name it, there was an investment campaign built around it […]

But explaining the new progressive hegemony in corporate Australia is less important than appreciating its likely political effects. The pact corporate Australia has made with progressive Australia rests on the assumption that the latter’s dominion (its one-party state) will endure indefinitely. As American economist Herb Stein observed: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” What will happen then?

This is why the sustained public punishment of Anheuser-Busch and Target, and the rise of Ron de Santis, are so crucial.

The Florida Governor presents a case that corporate Australia needs to take note of. He derides ESG as woke politics by an economic backdoor. “Environmental, social and governance” investing, claims DeSantis, will further defenestrate the US middle class, drive up its energy bills, and weaken its 401ks (American supers).

His campaign is not built on sticking it to Russia, but on ending the woke US boardroom. The message is simple and compelling.

De Santis is focussing on corporate America for pandering to the woke left while punishing middle America by failing to live up to its core purpose: making a buck for ordinary Americans to see through their retirement.

He has already banned by Florida law the use of ESG criteria in investment decisions for the state’s fund managers. “We want them to act as fiduciaries. We do not want them engaged on these ideological joy rides,” said DeSantis. What he has done for Florida, he promises, he will do for America.

The Australian

The only question is: is there anyone who will do the same for Australia or New Zealand? Chris Luxon is woke capitalism manifest. John Pesutto in Victoria is the avatar of dripping wet LINOism.

Peter Dutton is showing some vague promise, but he’s got a lot of wet blue-green pond scum to clean out of the Coalition. But in New Zealand? From National to ACT, you’re up the creek without a paddle.

Sorry, I mean up the awa without a hirau.