Shareholders spoke out and a group of climate activists disrupted ANZ’s annual meeting in Brisbane on Thursday. But chief executive Shayne Elliott defended the bank’s climate change commitments, stressing it was “absolutely committed to net zero”.
“It absolutely influences the decisions that we make every single day – who we bank, what we bank, where we will lend, where will not lend, who will deal with, how we behave,” he told the meeting. “It impacts all of those things every single day.”
ANZ’s Climate Change Commitments In Focus
But chaos engulfed the nearly four-and-a-half-hour meeting at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre as protesters dressed as clowns performed circus routines at the time of chairman Paul O’Sullivan starting to address the bank’s commitments.
Later during the meeting, shareholder Lesley Hughes said: “ANZ’s competitors are increasingly ruling out finance to expansionary coal, oil and gas projects and infrastructure projects that are critical to unlocking them.”
Hughes raised concerns over the bank in question being “a clear laggard in the space”, adding it’s 2023 and ANZ still hasn’t ruled out direct finance to new oil and gas fields. O’Sullivan said the bank had examined a number of scenarios to come to a conclusion.
For Australia to move on from coal, it would need to depend on gas for some of its requirements, the chairman noted. He said: “We can’t get there in one step,” referring to the transition to renewable energy. “We have to migrate towards it.”
Expansion Of Fossil Fuel Projects Raising Controversy
Meanwhile, Serena Joyner, chief executive of Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action, told O’Sullivan that his argument that the bank could help transition its customers away from fossil fuels had been referred to as the “drug dealer’s defence”.
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She raised alarm over expansion of fossil fuel projects putting communities at risk. Separately, Elliott agreed to meet with Indigenous people in the Tiwi Islands who are upset with Santos’ $5.8 billion Barossa gas project, which ANZ and other major banks have helped finance.
