Australian Deputy PM Dismisses Big Banks' Climate Risk Management As "Virtue Signaling"
Australia’s big banks have declared they need to actively manage climate risk because governments and regulators require it, and because the investor community is “increasingly transitioning its focus towards a net-zero emissions economy”. The banks and their lobbying arm, the Australian Banking Association (ABA), have used new submissions to a parliamentary inquiry to implicitly rebut claims from senior Nationals that their actions amount to moral posturing or virtue signalling.
The banks and the ABA point out current carbon risk practices – namely, disclosing information relating to climate exposures and calculating the potential risk of climate change on their balance sheets – are requirements driven by international governance setting bodies, of which Australian regulators and Australian companies are members. The parliamentary inquiry, chaired by the Queensland National George Christensen, was triggered by a public commitment from ANZ to step back from business customers with material thermal coal exposures – market signalling that sparked consternation from the Nationals.
After the ANZ’s statement last October, the agriculture minister David Littleproud called for a boycott of the bank, and the deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, declared the bank’s plan “virtue signalling”. Christensen has previously denied the link between climate change and the severity of natural disasters. In the wake of the ANZ fracas, the resources minister and Queensland National Keith Pitt originally instructed the joint standing committee on trade and investment growth to grill financial regulators, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, as well as the banks, about their plans to pull back on lending or insuring mining projects because of climate change.
But the inquiry stalled after the joint standing committee – in a rare rebuke – deferred making a decision about whether to proceed with Pitt’s original ministerial referral. The stalling reflected a view among some Liberals that the inquiry should not be a witch-hunt against banks managing carbon risk.
EDIT
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/may/21/australias-big-banks-reject-nationals-claims-managing-climate-risk-is-virtue-signalling