What’s your money backing?

You make conscious choices every day about what you support. But inside many investment funds labelled sustainable and not – these choices are being quietly overridden.   

Even well-known fund managers may be holding companies that cause long-term harm to people. That’s why it’s worth taking a closer look where your investments are really going. 
 

The cost of business as usual

• Australians lose more money to gambling per person than any country on earth – $32 billion a year at last count¹. Last year, nearly one in six adults experienced harm related to gambling.  
• No forced labour, child labour or coercive recAmong heavy gamblers, one in six reported suicidal thoughts. Nearly one in five women whose partner gambles regularly experiences intimate partner violence². 
• Tobacco costs an estimated $160 billion annually in social costs, and is responsible for nearly three-quarters of lung cancer cases in Australia³.
• Alcohol killed 1,765 Australians in 2024. The median age of death was 58⁴. 

These industries aren’t on the fringe or hidden. They are legal, regulated and profitable, which means they commonly appear in investment portfolios. 
 

These investments sit in well-known funds  

Mindful Investing⁶,an independent, not-for-profit initiative (powered by Mindful Money NZ) uses public disclosures to bring light to where funds are investing capital. It tracks exposure to tobacco, gambling, alcohol, adult entertainment and predatory lending across Australian superannuation investment options in its ‘Social harm’ category. 

The Mindful Investing report 'Inside Australia’s Super Funds: An Ethical Review of Investment Portfolios', May 2026, shows Australian Super’s MySuper Balanced fund holds 1.66% of its portfolio in these areas. This fund is the default super fund for millions of members. It has investments in companies such as Aristocrat Leisure, Lottery Corp, Tabcorp, Flutter Entertainment, Skycity Entertainment, Las Vegas Sands and Lottomatica, according to Mindful Investing.   

Check your fund using the Mindful Investing tool.

The Mindful Investing report shows that UniSuper’s Balanced fund exposure to social harm sits at 1.38%, and Vanguard’s MySuper Lifecycle (High Growth) sits at 1.35%. 

These aren’t niche super funds – they’re among the largest default funds in Australia. 
 

Alcohol killed 1,765 Australians in 2024. The median age of death was 58.

Where Australian Ethical differs

We do not invest in any of the companies listed above. Below are some more examples of what we don’t invest in and why. 

Gambling

Where we believe harm is the main business of a company, we take a different approach. All these examples derive most, and in some cases all of their revenue from gambling. Accordingly, these companies are not in our portfolios: 

• Aristocrat 
• Lottery Corp 
• Skycity Entertainment 
• Las Vegas Sands 
• Lottomatica 

Tobacco

We don’t invest in tobacco companies like Philip Morris. In our view there is no safe level of direct involvement in tobacco, which means we have zero exposure to any company we have identified as earning any revenue from tobacco plantations or manufacturing. 

But our process reaches further than the obvious names – we also avoid companies where tobacco plays a reasonably significant but indirect role in how they make money.  

Amcor, for example, doesn’t grow or produce tobacco, but when we assessed them in 2015, just under 15% of their revenue came from tobacco packaging. Under our ‘Harms to humans’ framework, indirect involvement in tobacco of more than 5% is enough to rule a company out.  

There are more examples of companies in this category we leave out of our portfolios, these are just a few of the ones relating to gambling and tobacco to show how our process results in us having different portfolios than many other funds.  

What’s noticeable is that even funds marketed as sustainable can still include some exposure to companies categorised as causing long-term harm to people. 

The Mindful Investing report found that a number of sustainable investment options had exposure to areas of social harm, including tobacco, gambling, alcohol, pornography and predatory lending.  

Australian Ethical's options had no exposure in this category, according to the report. While no investment portfolio can avoid every potential harm, our Ethical Charter and investment process are designed to significantly reduce exposure to activities that may cause harm to people, animals and the environment. 

Sustainable options most exposed to ‘Social harm’, according to Mindful Investing:

• Australian Super’s Socially Aware option (0.47%) 
• Rest Super’s Sustainable Growth option (0.25%) 
• Hesta Super’s Sustainable Growth option (0.20%)  
   

Source: Mindful Investing Report

Explore here to see what your money may be backing. 
 

Where we draw the line

For over 40 years, our Ethical Charter has guided us to restrict⁺ investments that contribute to these kinds of harms. Where the contribution to harm isn’t as cut and dry as some of the above examples, we take the time to look a bit closer. When we’re taking a closer look at how much a company is contributing to harm, we’re assessing two main things:  

• the nature of a company’s involvement in the relevant harm; and
• how much of its revenue depends on it. 

Woolworths and Coles are good examples of this next layer of assessment, both of which derive a small share of revenue from retailing alcohol and tobacco. When assessing alignment with the supermarkets and our Ethical Charter, we considered:

• Whether either supermarket’s sale of tobacco or alcohol products could be regarded as facilitating those industries. Whether Woolworths’ ongoing relationship with the drinks retailer Endeavour Group changed the nature of its involvement (while this close partnership constituted direct involvement in specialised alcohol retailing, Woolworths remains investable under our Retail Ethical Framework because the revenue it earns from this ongoing relationship is below our threshold). 

Woolworths and Coles are investable, but it doesn’t mean we haven't assessed and acknowledged the role these supermarkets play in the retailing of harmful products.  

We keep a watching brief on these companies and others that have a role to play – even if it’s a small part of their business– in these harmful areas.  
 

What are Australians really funding?

Every investment is a choice. Not just about returns, but about which businesses get the capital to grow. 

The world we'll live in tomorrow is shaped by where money flows today. That's why it's worth asking not just what your super could earn, but what it's helping to build. 

Learn more about our ethical investment process here.