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Lost: one moral compass. Please return (if it exists) to Australian business community

In business, reputation is gold. Lose it and you’re on the fast road to extinction. So why are Australian companies so bad at it? asks John McCarthy

Jul 22, 2024, updated Jul 22, 2024
Australians no longer trust business to do the right thing

Australians no longer trust business to do the right thing

Scan the business pages each day and you will see a plethora of companies which have tied their reputations to a stake and lit a match.

Star Entertainment, PwC, Qantas, CS Energy, AustralianSuper are, or have been, in strife recently but you could swap those names out with another list in a month’s time. The lesson never seems to be learnt and shareholders are the ones to face the impact as they watch their wealth wash down a drain.

The investment community, even during a cost-of-living crisis and falling standards of living, are nonetheless happy to reward companies that increase their margins. The primacy of the interests of shareholders means that greed is indeed good.

Throw into this mayhem of mistrust the media, lobbyists, politicians and indeed unions where power and influence are the currency, and the public is left asking who then, do we trust?

A Roy Morgan survey last week showed there was a rising level of distrust for business and since the pandemic, when there was a spirit of community, it’s actually become worse. About two-thirds of the adult population distrust business and most said they distrust business more than they used to.

The public perception, if not the reality, is that greed is the motivating factor. The survey found 25 per cent of respondents said greed was the reason they distrusted a company. During the pandemic it was 9 per cent.

Governments can legislate all they like about this, but really, it’s a question of morality and in many cases business executives and organisational leaders have none.

The next question is why?

As a nation we have let things slip. The so-called “tough cop on the beat’’ was out having lunch too often and companies came to believe they could get away it. And they did because the rewards were so high.

Politicians shrugged a bit too much, vested interests became too strong. The media was looking for something fresh and just saw the same old story, and the public grew tired of complaining with no result.

Even after a financial services Royal Commission stripped the industry of its arrogance, little has changed. The belief that sunlight is the best antiseptic and exposure of ill-deeds is a path forward is not well-founded. The shadows come back.

The public accepts that companies stuff up. It happens, it’s human nature. What really rankles is the cover-up or the decision to scuttle away from accountability, or indeed to not even to scuttle away but to shrug and say it’s all perfectly legal. It may be, but it’s not quite right.

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One respondent in the survey said the lack of trust was because companies had no moral compass, which neatly sums it up. Qantas and Optus were cited. Another attacked News Corp for its persistent bias.

A separate survey from the OECD found that Australian bureaucrats ranked highly in public confidence, but also revealed that the confidence in a government’s ability to make important decisions on complex policy issues waned, especially if those decisions involved trade-offs for different groups in society.

“These results are at least partly attributable to the lack of confidence in institutions and officials working in the public interest, being accountable to each other and the population, and allowing people to have a voice and influence on decision making,” the OECD survey said.

And what issues really annoys the public? Sacking workers during the pandemic when the company received taxpayer funds, executive pay, false advertising and data breaches. Huge profits during a cost-of-living crisis hasn’t helped.

Perhaps it’s human nature to let things slide, to leave crucial maintenance issues go for another quarter while the bank account is fattened up, or look the other way at some dodgy accounting, but it often tends to end in disaster.

Optus is still reeling from its debacles and is the least trusted brand in Australia. Not surprisingly, Facebook, Qantas, Medibank, TikTok and News Corp are also in the top 10 of least trusted brands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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