Machiavellian, not

Ah the ANU – for some reason, instead of just quietly selling off stock in resources companies, they had to put out a press release claiming the move was based on an ethical stance – actually a mixed bag of Environmental, Social and Governance Ratings. 10 points for stupidity there unless they actually wanted this stoush to draw attention to the issue.

And then you get into the situation where it is very clear that different people and groups have different ethics.

The clowns on the hill have to be seen to doing something about the ANU’s position on behalf of their corporate donors from the resources sector – and by such efforts they just make things worse by drawing more attention to the situation. They definitely get 10 points for stupidity.

In the old days someone would have, over a beer at the Park Hyatt, quietly threatened to withdraw unrelated government funding to the ANU and the whole thing would have softly disappeared down a plughole. It seems that our current apparatchik need to go back to the Machiavellian school of getting things done.

Unrelated, as resources are depleted you would think they would get commensurately more valuable. But then the cost of extracting them will get higher as they target the harder-to-get resources. And also the cost of using these resources may go up as greenhouse gas taxes are implemented. Also alternative renewable energy sources are starting to compete at lower prices. All up, I would say that there is enough uncertainty in these stocks to warrant off-loading them, solely for risk reasons.