The efforts of powerful business leaders in Australia to influence political opinion raises a troubling dimension to the role of corporations in public life, says Mallen Baker

There must be something in the water in Australia. Whereas everywhere else corporations and senior business leaders generally tiptoe their way through the process of influencing public policy, in Australia it is has become plain, no-nonsense, outright warfare.

Case in point is Gina Rinehart, a mining magnate and Australia’s richest woman. She is a fierce opponent of climate science, taxes on the mining industry and much else besides. She has funded political campaigns against proposed government measures, such as the carbon tax that came into being in July.

And now she wants control of the news company that produces the liberal-leaning Sydney Morning Herald and the Age. As the current largest shareholder of the company (she holds more than 18%), she has demanded three seats on the board, while refusing to sign the company’s charter guaranteeing editorial independence.

She has separately expressed the view that the country’s newspapers should print that climate change has been taking place over many thousands of years and is not caused by humans at all.

The board has, naturally, told her to take a hike. It focused on her refusal to guarantee editorial independence – she brushed this aside as a minor issue and said she was really focused on the share price.

Rinehart is not alone. Other mining magnates have also entered the public fray. Queensland billionaire Clive Palmer has said he will challenge the deputy prime minister for his seat in parliament at the next election. Andrew Forrest of Fortesque Metals Group, has launched a high court challenge to the government’s 30% levy on the profits on iron ore and coal over A$75m.

The three together signal a new breed of business leader – brash and opinionated and very keen to use their billions to buy themselves an acquiescent government and press. And not particularly bothered to conceal their intent.

This puts us into difficult territory. At a time when governments worldwide are pretty much stalled on progress in dealing with climate change, many have started to look at business and its schizophrenic role in the debate.

On the one hand, progressive businesses – as pragmatic transnational agents – increasingly look like the most likely influencers and agents of real progress. But on the other, some of those corporations led by people more influenced by the ideological agendas, or who see the world more in terms of their short-term self-interest and are in denial about information on longer-term trends – well, they are seen as part of the block on progress.

Brash billionaires

One might hope that some of those people over time will be replaced by more enlightened leadership because public corporations will ultimately be pushed onto agendas through necessity. But how does one deal with powerful, hugely rich individuals prepared to use businesses as tools for an ideological agenda?

It’s very easy to look at these individuals and dismiss what they aim to do as blatantly self-interested and against the public interest. But you have to be careful not to introduce double standards. After all, if we think that businesses should be putting pressure on governments to take serious action on climate change, then ultimately we are crossing the line that says companies should step into the public debate and influence policy.

Indeed, we positively purr when someone like Howard Schultz of Starbucks puts an open letter into the top newspapers urging America to sort out its problems. If we are to draw a line between what Schultz did, and what Rinehart seeks to do, we need to be very clear about where the line is.

It simply isn’t good enough to say that the line gets drawn between those promoting the issues we think are correct, and those promoting issues we think are fundamentally wrong.

This is why, inconvenient though it may be when governments appear broken, good governance remains crucially important.

Businesses adapting their own business practices is positive action. Making public statements about what needs to happen is all part of the healthy debate.

But editorial independence of the press is an important principle. And the right of governments to govern – even if they make mistakes (for which there is a mechanism for voters to rule upon) likewise.

Where Australia’s bullying billionaires go wrong is not in campaigning for what they believe, but in their contempt for the processes of good governance.

Mallen Baker is founder of Business Respect and a contributing editor to Ethical Corporation.