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Speech to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions

(ACFTU): on “sustainable economic development, low

carbon economy and the role of Australian trade unions in

these areas.” Matthew Tukaki: Speaker Notes

The University of Sydney, 9th of August 2012

Matthew Tukaki, Australian Representative, the United Nations Global Compact, CEO and Chairman of the

Sustain Group

Matthew Tukaki: Executive Biography

Matthew Tukaki is Australia’s Representative to the United Nations Global Compact where he

represents business and industry when it comes to Human Rights, Anti-Corruption, the Environment

and Labour. Matthew also holds a number of other roles in the Australian private and public sector

as the CEO and Chairman of the Sustain Group, Member of the Board of Australia’s Indigenous

Chamber of Commerce, Member of the Board of one of Australia’s Peak Mental Health Bodies,

Suicide Prevention Australia, a member of Deakin Universities Centre for Sustainable and

Responsible Organisations Advisory board and Chairman of the Living Earth Initiative, a project that

seeks to promote environmental science and backyard ecology amongst students and young people.

Matthew is formerly the Regional Head of Drake International where he was responsible for the

organisations operations. Drake is one of the world’s largest employment and Human Resources

Corporation. Matthew is considered to be a leading expert in the field of employment and is

recognised as a foremost expert in the fields of the business response to climate change and the

linkages between social and economic development. Within the UN family Matthew has been

instrumental in the development of the UNGC in our region, supporting the opening of an office in

Burma and leading Australia’s business delegation to the recent Rio+20 United Nations Conference

on Sustainable Development where he chaired several sessions focussed on the business response

to climate change, business and human rights, business and women’s empowerment. Matthew is

the former Chairman of the Australian Government Chief Information Officers Council, the

Government Policy Advisory Panel and the Workwise Group.

Matthew has previously led the operational reviews of some of Australia’s largest Government

agencies and departments such as the Joint House Department of the Parliament of Australia and

the Australian Communications Authority. He is equally passionate about Government to

Government and Business to Business relationships with China, has visited China on many occasions

and believes that China has a significant role to play at the global level when it comes to economic

leadership.

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Speech:

Slide One: Opening Slide / Front Cover

Good afternoon and welcome to Australia. Thank you for that warm introduction. Before I start I

would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, the Indigenous people of Australia

and in particular the Gadigal people. I pay my respects to the ancestors both past and present. The

Aboriginal people of Australia are the oldest continuous population in the world having occupied this

continent for more than 40,000 years. It is a tradition amongst senior business executives and

government leaders that when we open a conference or make a speech that we acknowledge the

important role Aboriginal people have played and continue to play – as I point out always has been

and always will be Aboriginal Land.

Today I am going to talk with you about an Australian perspective when it comes to sustainable

economic development, the low carbon economy and what I see as the role of Australian Trade

Unions to be in this area.

Slide Two: The world is changing

25 years ago, the former Prime Minister of Norway, Gro Brundtland, authored a report known as the

Brundtland Report – at the time it was world leading and proposed that social, economic and

environmental development were linked and you could not achieve one without the other. For many

years since Government, business and industry have grappled with each in isolation. Our approach

to social development has not always led to economic outcomes, our approach to economic

development does not necessarily lead to social outcomes and when it comes to the environment

we aim for the bigger targets without understanding quite clearly how we need to achieve them. For

example, in order to afford the myriad of climate change initiatives and targets that are being

proposed we need to ensure that we are able to finance them and that the programmes being

funded will lead to the very outcomes being proposed. On the social side we need to ensure that the

programmes being invested into actually do change lives and make a difference – that social

development leads to economic development – where jobs are created, education provided and

skills developed. Today, more than 25 years after the Brundtland report the United Nations

Sustainable Development Conference held in Rio came to that conclusion. In order to achieve the

things we must, we need to ensure we link social, economic and environmental development

together.

Slide Three: The role of business and industry

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The role business plays is equally as important as that of a nation state for one very simple, yet

fundamental reason, when a business crosses a countries border we call it investment and more and

more businesses are crossing borders every single day as our world grows smaller and our business

footprint grows larger. Many of you will begin to hear the words “social license to operate” – for

context, if a business is opening a site or operation in a developed country, a social license to

operate means that the business should be investing into different programs and initiatives that lead

to social and economic development – the creation of jobs in the local area or community, investing

in health and education programmes. Some of Australia’s largest corporations such as BHP and Rio

Tinto are doing exactly this. In addition to the social license to operate more and more Australia’s

businesses are seeing this not as sustainability or corporate social responsibility, more so we are

defining it through a series of social investments. If we have $1 million budgeted for a community

based education program then let’s ensure that the return is x number of children or community

members being educated that then lead to employment on our site. So, the difference between

what business used to do and what we do now has changed – we now measure what we do and we

make our social investments count as much as possible.

One great example is a company called Asia Pulp and Paper who, over the years, have invested

significantly in programs and initiatives that extend well past just social and economic development;

they have also linked in initiatives such as environmental protection and bio-diversity. One example

is the locking up of more than 700,000 hectares of rainforest into what is now known as the Giam

Siek Biosphere – a remarkable achievement.

Slide Four: building bridges with Government

Another aspect of the journey business is taking is recognising that in order to be effective we must

partner with Government to achieve our joint national and economic interests. Here in Australia our

overseas aid and development agency, AusAid, will soon release their private sector development

strategy. Business welcomes this as it sets the scene for how we can partner around the delivery of

different initiatives and the sharing of information and knowledge about operating environments of

countries where we both have a presence – in my view if we were to look at the more than $10

billion in Aid that the Government delivers every single year, match that with the social investment

activities that business undertakes, then our ability to create and develop better outcomes would be

much more fundamental.

Slide Five: back at home – climate change being the challenge

All of that to one side; we need to focus on the more complex challenge that faces each of us and all

of us – that of climate change. I would argue that business and industry have an equal role to play

alongside Government and the community. Yes Governments can regulate, as they have done in

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Australia through the carbon price, but business we lead the way when it comes to innovation. The

transition into a low carbon economy is not just a necessary one; it needs to be managed correctly

and in order to do so we must first face up to one of the biggest challenges of all – population. For

perspective, our global population will grow to be 9 Billion by 2040 and the number of middle class

consumers will also grow by about 3 Billion. By 2030 we will need 50% more food, 45% more energy

and 30% more water. To be more blunt, as the middle class grows the product consumption demand

will also grow – for example, imagine that 20 million more people in Indonesia move into the middle

class over the next 15 years and each one of them buys an LCD television, a fridge, a washing

machine and a laptop computer. That’s four appliances for each of those 20 million people – 80

million new appliances connected to the electricity grid – or in India a rise in the middle class of just

100 million people which could add more than 100 million new cars to the roads. While no-one

should be stopped from aspiring to be wealthier or be an active participant in the economy, we must

also be realists – in order to address climate change and sustainable economic development we

must first address the challenges that will come with significant population growth. We must

balance that with the right of a developing country to develop, of the need ourselves to transition

into lower carbon economies, give business and industry the ability to adapt and to innovate.

Slide Six: The scale of the investment required

“The scale of investment, innovation, technological development and employment creation required

for sustainable development and poverty eradication is beyond the range of the public sector.” This

sets the scene for arguing that “we need to use the power of the economy to forge inclusive and

sustainable growth and create value beyond narrow concepts of wealth. Markets and

entrepreneurship will be a prime driver of decision making and economic change.” Here in Australia

while the price on carbon has been unpopular I would argue it is not because it is bad policy it was

just badly communicated and developed at a time when our Government needed to negotiate with

the Greens to remain in power. The prime motivator of carbon pricing in Australia is the

fundamental need to transition our own economy to that of a low carbon one. While it may not be

apparent today or indeed over the next twelve months – the fact is we have already set the scene

for changes in behaviour, entrepreneurship will take hold and innovation will occur. The investment

Australia is making, business, government and community is in the billions – but as we move down

the path of these next few years that investment will pay off. Our energy sector will transition and

transform, business will create and develop new technologies from software to product around

energy efficiency and I fully expect that professional services will become a significant export

industry. In a similar way to how our country is responding, China is also responding. China is making

investments that quite frankly are much larger and more substantial. Our challenge is to be as

competitive or better than our Chinese counterparts. It’s also not just big business playing the role of

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innovator. Small businesses is playing its part – Netbalance and Banarra in the professional services

fields, Sebel Furniture in the Manufacturing sector – I could name many.

Slide Seven: The role of unions

I believe that our Trade Unions have an enormous role to play when it comes to our economy wide

transition into a low carbon economy – but I also suggest that any participant in the employment

and jobs market has a role to play. Here in Australia two of the other largest employment market

participants are the recruitment industry and what we call Job Services Australia. The recruitment

sector works with business, industry and government for the placement of people into work, those

who are moving from one job to another – or in reverse, organisations who are looking for talent or

skills. Job Services Australia works with the unemployed to transition them back into work. All

through of these employment market participants have an equal role to play alongside business and

government and academic institutions. Because, in order to achieve the very things we must we it

comes to climate change and sustainable economic development – we need the skills and expertise.

We need to teach and educate, build new skills and transition out of date skills into being more

relevant for the economy of tomorrow. We need to accept that as some of our older industries

being to fall by the wayside and as new industries evolve from them or rise – we need the skills and

expertise to man our shops and factories, our power stations and farms, our schools and institutions,

our corporations and government departments. The success or failure of any low carbon economy is

investing in skills and education as the primary foundation. I personally believe in strong and

effective trade unions and while some would argue that trade unions in Australia have lost their

relevance through a drop in membership – I would argue in reverse. Just as business is moving down

the path of fostering innovation and entrepreneurship – so to can our union movement.

Slide Eight: the role of monitor

I also see a role for unions at the regional level to monitor and research the ever increasing

challenges around both skilled and unskilled migration. By that I mean the movement of tens of

millions of people around the regions of Asia and the Middle East. Stories abound of the treatment

of Chinese, Filipino, Indonesian, Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers – of how passports are

taken away from people in the construction industry in the middle east otherwise they won’t get the

job, held onto by the employer, the wages are never paid, accommodation is twenty people to a

room and the employer closes down – only to strand that foreign national in a foreign land. With no

way home, no money and no support. Of the treatment of Indonesian and Filipino workers in the

middle east, abused and underpaid. Of Chinese workers being underpaid in foreign fishing fleets and

construction sites. The use of child labour and the treatment of labour by foreign companies with

manufacturing operations or suppliers in China. The example I give is a Taiwanese company making

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American branded products in manufacturing plants in china where there are high instances of

suicide amongst the young working population. Quite frankly, I don’t care what colour your skin or

where you come from, the shape of your eyes, the language you speak, your religion or orientation –

a human being is a human being and the role of unions is important to ensure that our people, your

people are not taken advantage of. On that point I reference a wise man who said “Never impose on

others what you would not choose for yourself.” That wise man was the Chinese philosopher,

confucious.

Slide Nine: the links

Finally, sustainable economic development and the low carbon economy, the role of Unions and

business, government and the community are all linked. Social, Economic and Environmental

development need to be seen through those links because we cannot achieve one without the

other. I wanted to wish you all the best for your stay in Australia and look forward to future

exchanges with you all.