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RELIGION

Which bishop is challenging the bank on fossil fuels?

  • 12 November 2014

The church and our financial system don’t really go together, or do they? We may find out when shareholders of the Commonwealth Bank hear Bishop George Browning at Wednesday’s CBA AGM. Presenting a resolution which has appeared on the CBA notice of meeting, the former bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn will be requesting more transparency about the bank’s fossil fuel investments. 

This resolution reflects a justifiable concern that investment in such fuels may drop in value because their ongoing use will take our global temperatures beyond a two degree increase, the UN-agreed limit for a habitable world. In a nutshell, some shareholders are worried their banks will be stranded with investments in ‘un-burnable carbon’. Bishop Browning also sees such a profligate abuse of our resources as a threat to the sacred balance of the whole of creation.

The media has already drawn our attention to the incredible profitability of our big four banks in Australia compared with other banks in the world, and to the apparent abuse of trust in some banks’ financial counselling operations. In addition, there has been an avalanche of divestment, including from the Rockefellers and the ANU, as they discern a lack of concern for environmental, social and governance issues.

Despite all this, putting a resolution at a company’s AGM has turned out to be more complicated than the ordinary citizen might expect. The Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR) was formed in 2012 because of this very challenge to our ‘corporate democracy’. It has taken considerable homework for the ACCR to gather the requisite 100 shareholders in order to put this resolution to the bank and, not taking any chances, it took care to express its resolution in several formats. 

It submitted not only an ‘ordinary resolution’, asking in a straightforward way for more transparency concerning fossil fuels involvement, but, because it knew that the bank might not agree to table the resolution in this form, it also phrased its request as a ‘special resolution’. This latter is not really suitable because it requires alterations to the corporation’s constitution and, understandably, shareholders would rather avoid such a cumbersome and time-consuming procedure. The ACCR only included the special resolution option because corporations have been known to argue that it is the only legal format open to shareholders seeking change. 

Naturally, it was a bitter disappointment for the ACCR that the CBA chose the special resolution option to
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