My list of "Australia's Worst Corporate Citizen,"
is as follows:

1) James Hardie
2) Telstra
3) AWB
4) Gunns Pulp Mill
5) Pacific Brands
6) BHP Billiton

And that's just for starters.

Lintner, Ariadne, Hooker Corp, Bond Corp, HIH, Skase, One Tel, ...

Lets face it, the very concept of "corporate citizenship" almost guarantees this sort of outcome, it divorces those who make the decisions from the consequences of those same decisions. As far as I'm concerned it should be dumped outright, make those who profit from the company responsible for the actions there-of. They currently get paid to be bastards basically.

As usual I have a different (potentially over thunk) take on the question.
Firstly I object to the notion of Corporate citizens . This is clear spin to normalise (anthropomorphise) a non voting non sentient entity...a created Artificial non human entity (tool for borrowing money and make profit without shareholders being directly held responsible for the actions it undertakes in their name) more acceptable in human terms.

This normalising is done to make people more able to identify with corporations by giving them pseudo personalities.

Therefore the problem is one of cause and effect. The cause is the law that created such hard to control entities.
The effect is that it actively encourages ambitions activities that we wouldn't normally accept from individuals. In many cases their size gives them preferences over people as is the case for the corporations Foxy noted. It attracts a mentality that 'it's only wrong if you get caught' and short term manipulation for short term/ selfish goals.

The flaw in the logic is that bigger is always more efficient ….but is it ? Corporations tend to have undue influence over real people.

Clearly a corporation's flaws are largely due to
Inept, greedy or in appropriate management
The selfish aims/expectations of the shareholders (often institutional investors taking the actual people (humanity) even further from the actions and therefore away from their responsibility to others
The latter point is indicative of JHI .
All three management, institutional investors and the share holders ARE responsible for the actions in their name.
Just because it's legal or makes a profit doesn't make it right.
The question could more accurately read which combination of the three players are the most irresponsible under which corporation?

Corporate law should be limited to the point whereby all three can be held proportionately responsible. Until they are “Frankenstein's monster is in charge of the castle”
PS it's good to see the directors being convicted of breaking the law. A pox be on them all!

James Hardie simply trail a long line of corporate thugs involved in the mining industry.

Asbestos related diseases are more easily indentified but spare a thought for the victims of silicosis in the goldfields of WA where one will never know how many were actually "dusted" or how many died of the disease with state government doctors "misdiagnosing" the health problems of those tortured souls, some witnessed gasping for air for decades before receiving a pittance of compensation (if at all) and before succumbing to a merciful death.

Mining inspectors in the 50's in WA issued reports, objecting to the extent of the silica dust in underground mining but the dust continued and so did the human mortalities.

Nothing has changed for today, those who feel a duty to expose the unethical practices in the mining industry are "luddites" as were the initial complainants in the James Hardie fiasco.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I wonder why Meredith Hellicar was chosen as the CEO of James Hardie? My guess is that it was because JH knew it had an image problem and wanted to put a more caring human face on show.

The same thing happened where I work. Don't know whether it was coincidence or by design, but just before we had a serious downsizing a very corporate-oriented woman was appointed to be the head of HR. She was gone not long after we had a second downsizing about 3 years later when she took a voluntary redundancy herself. I'm guessing that once she fulfilled the need of the organisation, the normal gang took over control again.

This type of tactic, if it is one, makes their culpability worse because it means they were always willing to snow everyone on their way through.