Why making business better matters to your super

As Australia’s largest supermarket chain by market share, Woolies has enormous influence over how food is produced and sourced. That scale brings responsibility – and opportunity. 

We recently raised concerns about areas where we believe Woolworths’ standards need to be improved.

From our perspective, these aren’t just sustainability issues. They’re governance and leadership issues - how a company manages its supply chain affects trust, risk and long-term value. 

At Woolworths’ October AGM, we supported shareholder resolutions calling for stronger commitments, including recognising beef as a high-risk deforestation-linked commodity. We see this as a chance to lift standards, rebuild confidence, and strengthen its long-term value proposition.  

The sustainability resolutions we highlighted – through our questions at the Woolworths AGM and in media coverage in the lead up – gained pleasing support, with 12.9% of votes cast for the beef classification resolution and 34.3% for improved farmed seafood reporting¹. 

That’s making Woolies better in practice and contributing to the broader push for more sustainable food production.

For more than a decade we’ve been engaging Australia’s major banks as part of a long-term effort to limit financing for fossil fuel expansion. This work isn’t about ideology – it’s about managing climate risk, which is a financial risk. Progress hasn’t been even. 

The Commonwealth Bank (CBA) has been lowering its lending to fossil fuel expansion companies in recent years, representing a gradual tightening of standards. 

The National Australia Bank has also recently strengthened its approach in its most recent sustainability disclosures², where NAB now requires its oil and gas customers to cap or reduce hydrocarbon output, while also setting scope 3 targets. Following these changes, we agreed to withdraw a shareholder resolution³ (we had co-filed with Market forces against NAB) in recognition of the progress made. 

We see the progress made by CBA and, more recently by NAB, as positive steps that reflect the direction many shareholders, including us, have been consistently advocating for. While there is more work to do, it reinforces the value of staying engaged over the long-term. 

Meanwhile, while Westpac previously committed to only provide new or renewed corporate lending to oil and gas companies with credible transition plans aligned with the Paris Agreement, including Scope 1, 2 & 3 emissions, late last year, those standards were weakened⁴.  

We believe loosening standards at a time of accelerating climate risk is concerning and a backward step.  

In a highly competitive banking sector, we believe banks that fall behind on risk management and credibility may expose shareholders to avoidable long-term pressures. It also contributes to the broader systemic risks of physical climate change facing Westpac and the economy more broadly. We think these risks outweigh the short-term financial benefit of continuing to lend to fossil fuel expanders. 

So, we sent Amanda Richman, Head of Stewardship at Australian Ethical, to the Westpac AGM to ask some relevant questions and apply pressure. Take a look at her video below to find out how it went. 

Insurance plays a crucial and often overlooked role in enabling fossil fuel expansion. Projects don’t just need finance, they need insurance to go ahead too.  

As a general insurer and reinsurer, QBE insures homes and businesses that are increasingly exposed to climate-driven risks. At the same time, its current policies allow the underwriting of new oil and gas projects well into the future. 

We believe this creates a growing mismatch. As climate impacts become more frequent and sever⁵, the risk on insurance books rises. Continuing to underwrite activities that contribute to those risks raises questions about the company’s long-term resilience and direction. 

That’s why we’ve raised these issues directly with QBE. Late last year, QBE disclosed it is updating its approach to underwriting oil and gas customers. We continue to engage with the company to understand what these changes mean in practice. Subject to the outcomes of those engagements, we’ll also be front and centre at QBE’s AGM in May, calling for stronger climate and sustainability standards through shareholder action. You can join our campaign with Six Invest to build individual shareholder pressure here.