Page 3007 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 June 2010
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used by other governments around the world and I would put on the record that New Zealand is one government that certainly is investing ethically.
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (10.24): I was not intending to speak to this but, just in response to Ms Hunter’s discussion about ethical investment—and I have no problems with investing ethically, absolutely not—to include companies that are associated with manufacturing weapons in your list of companies that we should not invest in, I think, is not something that we should consider ethical or unethical. When you look at those sorts of companies—Boeing, Raytheon, Australian Defence Industry, Thales, General Electric, Australian Submarine Corp and so on—and if you actually look at the list of companies that either directly manufacture weapons or are associated with componentry for weapons, be it submarines, be it aircraft, be it any form of weapon or weapon delivery system, I think you will find that a lot of companies are associated with that. Remember that, in the Australian context, the people who are actually supplied with those weapons are the Australian Defence Force, our police forces and other services here.
I am not going to turn this into a debate about cluster bombs but I do think that, if you are going to say carte blanche that ethical investment precludes businesses that manufacture weapons, then that is wrong. If it is going to be weapons that have been outlawed under certain conventions that Australia has signed up to, to do with mines or cluster bombs, then that is fine. But carte blanche if you are coming in here with some ideological agenda that we should outlaw the investment by the superannuation account in companies that are associated with manufacturing weapons, I think that you have taken ethical investment a step beyond and really you need to consider what you are actually saying there.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Proposed expenditure—Part 1.11—Territory Banking Account—$214,000 (capital injection) and $11,839,000 (payments on behalf of the territory), totalling $12,053,000.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Mr Hargreaves): I call Mr Smyth.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (10.26): I thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Before you go on, Mr Smyth, I noticed in your commentary on the home loan portfolio that you did not mention the home loan portfolio at all in that dissertation.
MR SMYTH: I did.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: I will just ask you, please, to at least mention the territory bank account once or twice in your speech.
MR SMYTH: I will read my home loan portfolio opening statements again. I said that the number of loans that have been whittled down—
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, I am just—
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