I’M calling to account everyone from activist shareholders to Australian regulators and international investors for their complicity in moves by the banking and insurance sector to deny services to businesses engaged in our highly profitable coal and live animal export sectors.

The Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth, which I chair, has released its report on the Prudential Regulation of Investment in Australia’s Export Industries today. In that report I’ve commented on the ‘thinly veiled corporate wokery masquerading as environmental, social and governance issues’.

 There are businesses in North Queensland, Central Queensland, Newcastle and indeed across the country who have been facing the threat of losing access to essential services – banking transactions, finance, and insurance they can afford.

They have been pressured to step away from, or limit their involvement with, the coal mining sector if they want to get finance and insurance.

Over the course of five public hearings and receiving over 70 submissions, we’ve heard how financial institutions have used risk, particularly the ill-defined ‘climate risk’ to threaten profitable and law-abiding companies, particularly in the coal sector but also live exporters with a loss of services.

Some of those factors influencing our banks and insurers are targeting by activists and negative media coverage, the noisy minority of shareholder activists, unclear directions from regulators such as APRA and ASIC and the influence of international investors such as BlackRock who use their sizeable capital to shift our financiers away from certain export industries.

The report makes 13 recommendations to Government; the most important of which is that the Australian Government accept the notion that finance and insurance are essential services for business.

If this notion alone is accepted, then clearly action must follow to ensure that business in this nation has access to those essential services.

To read all recommendations and the report in full go to the committee website. Inquiry into the prudential regulation of investment in Australia’s export industries – Parliament of Australia (aph.gov.au)