The public company AGM season is getting into full swing but already the fully online format is producing noticeable problems, with awkward questions being overly censored by sensitive boards.
For instance, the after dark free speech obsessives at Sky News Australia will no doubt be outraged that attempts to mention their name and campaigns at multiple AGMs this week have been rejected.
News Corp used to be a shareholder in emerging online gambling company PointsBet, which now has a market capitalisation of $2.57 billion and has recently become the biggest gambling advertiser on Sky News, even surpassing Sportsbet and Ladbrokes.
PointsBet held its third AGM as a public company on Monday, and I lodged 22 questions through the online platform.
Chairman Brett Paton, a former Tabcorp director and investment banker who now owns more than $150 million worth of PointsBet shares, took on the MC role himself during the 72-minute meeting but somehow neglected to read out 13 of my 22 questions, including this one, which was lodged as number two:
Sky News is a disgrace with its endless climate denialism, regular soft interviews with Pauline Hanson and pandering to the dangerous anti-vax movement. Why are we advertising so regularly, even whilst this AGM is underway, on this appalling channel?
It was a similar story at yesterday’s AGM of Melbourne-based listed investment company AMCIL Ltd, which boasts the presence of Siobhan McKenna on its board — Lachlan Murdoch’s long-time chief fixer, McKenna is the executive chair of Sky News Australia and a director of Woolworths, which has recently been spruiking its green credentials like never before.
McKenna has been protected from questions regarding climate change at previous AMCIL and Woolworths AGMs, even when up for election, and didn’t speak or appear once at yesterday’s 75-minute AMCIL AGM.
I ended up lodging 12 written questions with the AMCIL board yesterday. Two weren’t asked at all and most were edited right down, particularly this question to McKenna, which was transformed into a request for new chair Rupert Myer (yes, that billionaire family) to simply outline AMCIL’s position on climate change.
The CVs of directors matter. I’m concerned that one of our directors, Siobhan McKenna, is the chairman of Sky News Australia, which continues to pump out climate denialist rubbish every night of the week. Could the chair please spell out AMCIL’s position on climate change and could Siobhan McKenna please comment on why she remains as chair of Sky News Australia when its climate denialist campaigning conflicts with AMCIL’s position, plus the climate position of other boards she sits on, particularly Woolworths?
Remarkably, McKenna has been accompanying Woolworths chairman Gordon Cairns in recent meetings with investor groups, creating the impression that she might be in the running to succeed him as chair. Surely that can’t happen while she’s executive chair of the various dancing bears of Sky after dark, such as Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt, Paul Murray, Chris Kenny and Peta Credlin.
For starters, to become Woolworths chair McKenna would need to significantly pare back her workload which was laid out in this question at yesterday’s AMCIL AGM. Once again the question wasn’t read out in full and she didn’t offer up any explanation:
Could Siobhan McKenna please explain how she has the time to attend to her AMCIL responsibilities when she is executive chair of Foxtel, Fox Sports and Sky News Australia, a director of Nova Entertainment and reportedly one of the potential successors to Gordon Cairns as chair of Woolworths. This seems like a ridiculous workload and doesn’t make sense. How many hours a week is she devoting to all these different gigs?
Having failed to get Sky News questions read out at both the PointsBet and AMCIL AGMs in recent days, the next attempt will be at the Commonwealth Bank AGM next Wednesday.
CBA is the only big four bank that regularly advertises on Sky News and in recent months it has been more prominent than Macquarie Group, which professes to be our greenest bank but hasn’t drawn the line at advertising on Sky News.
Former Sky News Business presenter Helen Dalley was the MC and question reader at last year’s first-ever fully online CBA AGM and is expected to perform the role again next Wednesday.
Will she choose to — or be allowed to — read out hostile questions about Sky News climate denialism and the CBA’s curious advertising choices? We’ll soon find out.
As a long term Doncaster resident, council meeting attendee and environmentalist I maybe Share some blood and empathy for your stand. The current COVID pandemic will be seen as a pothole on planets history road and the money at all cost deniers will be seen for many years to come s the Climate Change Criminals . Keep the bastards honest Stephen
Keep up the good work Stephen. It must be dispiriting.
Sky News – and right-wing populist news media in general – is appalling, but I suspect your questions were dismissed because they were argumentative and polemical; perhaps, even, they were regarded as a populist stunt because of their phrasing.
Instead of getting an answer, you actually made it easier for a dissenting voice to be ignored.
Nice work, Stephen! Keep it up
I don’t suppose there is any connection to the fact that both Lachlan Murdoch is building up his gambling portfolio and Siobhan McKenna’s move into Woolworths – a major player in the gambling industry?