Reconciliation action plan July 2021 to 2022

The opening keynote at the International Corporate Governance Network's 30th anniversary conference in New York delivered a striking message. NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, overseeing $300 billion in pension assets, didn't mince his words: "If we don't do systemic stewardship, we'll lose billions of dollars in value."

Can it ever be ethical to inflict pain on animals? If so, under what circumstances? What if their suffering helps to discover a drug with the potential to save or transform millions of lives? What if testing an experimental drug or procedure on one group of animals helps to develop a treatment that will spare countless other animals from suffering? And, where there are viable alternatives, to what lengths should companies go to use them?

When I began specialising in Ethical Investment in 1994, the landscape was sparse. At that time, there was only one ethically labelled investment fund available: the Australian Ethical Balanced Trust. That fund, combined with a superannuation platform that allowed direct share investment and term deposits with smaller banks, was the extent of my options.