There is concern in some quarters that virtue-signalling businesses are breaching their duties to shareholders by meddling in social issues which have nothing to do with their actual business activities. Qantas is the leading example of pronouncements on same sex 'marriage, gender issues and pronoun use, for example. Under the Corporations Act, a corporation's duty is to pursue the proper purpose of the company and to maximise profits within reason.

The problem is that there's nothing illegal about this virtue signalling. Boards have wide powers to fiddle about with non-shareholder interests. They can spend their shareholders money on all sorts of nonsense on projects that make themselves feel good. Some of them even have well-paid managers, who have nothing to do with the businesses’ core purpose, engineering what staff should think and say, and advertising to the public and their customers how 'nice’ and 'caring’ the company is.

So, what's to be done? Well, shareholders need to wake up to the fact that their money us being used for things other than increasing their dividends, and customers should take their business elsewhere, and advise the corporate poohbars why they are doing so.

This sounds desperate...best of luck with this one ttbn.

dd,

I'll have to do a Pauline Hanson here and ask you to “please explain”. How is it “desperate”? Why do I need “ luck”? It's not about me. I'm just an observer of stupidity.

I guess we'd have to read the Qantas Mission Statement,
their Commitment statement, their method of Governance,
the make-up of their Board of Directors, and so on -
to be able to fully judge what it is that they
stand for and why they take the actions that they have
in certain areas. I'm sure that their shareholders would
know the policies of the company prior to investing with
them. Qantas is a "leading premium airline company dedicated
to being the best" and it caters to a wide clientele, staff,
it's Board, and - it's Managing Director. Which may explain the
company's stand on certain issues. It is after all a private
business - so it works within the set boundaries.

cont'd ...

I've just found this link that explains why Qantas took
the stand that it did on same sex marriage:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-25/alan-joyce-calls-for-businesses-to-support-same-sex-marriage/8842332

The CEO of Qantas feels that it is "good for business."

Thanks for creating this post Ttbn. I don't support SSM and won't be supporting Qantas from now.