Over at New Matilda, I’ve had a look at the career of Meredith Hellicar, the Chairwoman of James Hardie Industries since 2004 and a Director of the company since 1992.
Hellicar’s career tells us a lot about the ethics of Australia’s business leaders. Despite her pivotal role in one of the most immoral corporate acts in Australian history, Hellicar was a popular member of Australia’s business elite.
First, the context. Asbestos has killed more than 7,000 Australians, many of them workers for James Hardie Industries. Many workers have now successfully sued James Hardie for the asbestos exposure that has caused mesothelioma and other lethal cancers.
In early 2001, James Hardie’s board of directors hatched a plan to try and escape from the company’s massive asbestos liabilities. They stripped most of the company’s assets and placed them in a new holding company based in The Netherlands, where they wouldn’t be legally liable for the dying workers in Australia.Then they lied to the Australian Stock Exchange, claiming that their Australian operation was “fully funded” to meet the asbestos claims of dying workers. James Hardie even tried to write off its payments to asbestos victims as a tax refund.
The Chairwoman of that board was Meredith Hellicar.
You would think that this woman, the person in charge of a company that has killed thousands of its workers and then systematically tried to avoid facing up to its responsibilities, would be a pariah in Australia. You would think that no government or corporation would want to be associated with her.
You would be wrong. Meredith Hellicar was a popular member of Australia’s business elite. She was on the board of AMP, the Sydney Institute, the Sydney Airport, even cancer research centre The Garvan Institute. She was a member of the federal government’s Takeovers Panel. John Howard gave her a Centenary Medal for “services to business.”
Last Thursday a judge found she had acted illegally as a Director of James Hardie. But while former James Hardie workers continue to die, all Merdith Hellicar faces is a fine.
Howard always supported the pariah’s just remember his brother, Reith, Vanstone etc etc
Quite a few deaths in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley caused by asbestos. Widely used in the State-owned power stations. Blokes came home with white dust all over their overalls sometimes. The stuff was drifting down like confetti, they say.
So some compensation due from the State?
OTOH, James Hardie’s actions were some of the most unethical we’ve become aware of…..
Good post. I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more of an outrage about this matter.
It seems we only really get outraged by a few boatloads of poor bastards seeking refuge, or some other issue of the day that the media chooses to beat up out of all proportion.
The Sydney Institute, hey? What a wasteland Gerard Henderson’s ethical landscape is. Hendo seems to have petrified back in about 1955, when his hero Bob Santamaria was plotting to keep the ALP out of office for a generation and asbestos was still thought by the masses to be a wonder product. Of course, the scientists and medicos who knew better back then kept their mouths shut, afraid no doubt of being pilloried by the equivalent of today’s climate change deniers.
What’s to be outraged about? We’ve set up a system where publicly listed business has only one legally permissible goal – to make money in any legal way, and you want us to profess outrage when businesspeople act as directed? Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?
This is just another case in a long line of similar cases. No exceptional originality has been shown, amounts involved not spectacular, collateral damage to date minimal. The body count is fairly high, but I doubt it’s going to reach that of a number of widely supported businesses (Holden, Bundaberg, Philip Morris etc). Didn’t Alan Bond do much worse and he’s still a widely respected Australian? Or does driving retirees to an early grave not count?
I don’t really understand how Meredith Hellicar can sleep at night. Although I’m reminded of Michael Leunig’s cartoon of the poor man and the rich man:
Poor man: Here I am … UNEMPLOYED … UNIMPORTANT …
And there you are … WEALTHY … POWERFUL …
You own property … gold … art … wine and human souls in massive, sickening, criminal quantities …!
HOW DO YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT …?
Rich man: I sleep at night between silk sheets on a heated, king size auto-massage water bed with piped music in a very quiet street …with a companion whose beauty would make you weep with desire …
Still, hopefully Hellicar will be persona non grata from now on…
Or, you know, it could tell us a lot we already know about high-functioning sociopaths. But please don’t let me stop you from smearing and stereotyping a whole community.
“But please don’t let me stop you from smearing and stereotyping a whole community.”
Oh, diddums…
Funny thing is, I was at the shareholder’s meeting where Meredith Hellicar was introduced as the latest director. I was a student and went with my Dad (a shareholder) for the educational experience and the free tucker. There was great applause for the first woman director. I think she was already on a couple of boards by then. MH did not speak — I wondered if she were shy.
I’d like to hear Hoyden’s take on this focus on the one female on the board, who started there well after Hardie knew about its little asbestos problem, and who only became chairman in 2004 — the same year the shortfall in the asbestos trust fund was identified.
I am not saying Hellicar isn’t culpable. I’m just saying it’s interesting how much opprobrium is being directed at her. I certainly couldn’t name the other people who are in trouble along with her — their names aren’t getting quite the same airplay!
Jacques – It is a little naughty to characterise her as a psychopath and hence dismiss the claim. Even if one accepts the questionable proposal of her psychopathy, that actually sharpens the point about the widespread acceptance. If her behaviour is so evil it is only explicable by mental illness then the easy acquiescence of her peers is even more worthy of derision and “smearing”.
Chookie,
It’s not just her femalitude. She was the spokeslady for the whole Board. We saw her front Red Kezza on the “7.30 Report”. She was repeatedly quoted in the daily press, as the whole sorry charade unravelled.
We have limited attention spans. We like to seize on one name. Next you’ll be telling us that the Hawke Cabinet had more than two Ministers in it!
Dr S
Q.1 “A sociopath is not necessarily a psychopath”. Discuss.
Depends whose definitions you use. DSM now rolls them into antisocial personality disorder. The main debate was whether sociopathy was too focused on your problem with their behavior rather than the person who suffered the illness themselves.
I stand corrected and a little better informed, Dr.
The Path Lab is right to raise this distinction.
A sociopath is aware of community responsibilities but feels it’s not relevant to their chosen course, while a psychopath just doesn’t give a shit. They both lack empathy but at least one recognises you have to fake it to achieve your aims. That’s the difference between Dick Cheney and Martin Bryant.
Google her name and the first article that comes up is from the Hun with a story that she’s ‘quit’ from other boards. There were ten James Hardie Directors involved in the fraud, Peter MacDonald was one whose name is mentioned. I went looking for the other guys. Nowhere to be found. Here is a ? newish line up of blokes. They’ve ditched the broad.
I guess really she should burn at the stake. A woman! lying callously while people she had a duty of care over dropped like flies. Its unconscionable. She’s probably wondering why she alone seems to be copping all the heat in the press (duh). Still she should have realised she’d end up being the fall guy. As we all know, there is no honour among thieves and doubly so definitely not towards women.
Funny how a women so often gets propelled to the top of the heap or appointed as chief misspokeswoman, when the company’s goin’ down.
If I were a woman aiming at – and suddenly achieving – high corporate office, I’d be looking out for those pesky shards.
There has to be some downside in shattering the glass ceiling, after all.
As for Ms Hellicar, and all her colleagues, sympathy? Nup.
It was depressing but, I suppose, predictable, that I heard or read some dude – can’t remember as it was during the morning commute and missed it- saying how disappointing it was that a woman executive would do that, we would have expected better or some such. There is still an expectation that women managers or bosses have to be somewhat “better”, kind of like a loving mother or auntie, and please everybody. Now I’m all for rehabilitating the toxic corporate culture and reasessing whether all the dick-waving behaviour we’ve seen associated with it is really valuable. But some peoples’ concept of how this should be done is more in tune with the Angel in the House Victorian concept; Woman as reformer and tamer of the uncontrollable male. In other words, same shit, different day.
We haven’t shattered the glass ceiling when we are consistently expected to be intrinsically better. We have achieved equality when we are only expected to be just as good. (I am not condoning the actions of Hardie corporation in any way.)
And if the James Hardie scandal didn’t exist, we have almost have to invent it.
Compared to the UK, US, Asia and Europe, Australia’s been quite lacking in industrial slaughter. Choking a few thousand through creeping punctured lung death. Or a few hundred dead in 19th century NSW coal mines. That’s nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands who have died dirty deaths in the pursuit of profits from the Ruhr and Pittsburg to Manchester and Shanghai.
But here, thanks to the 19th and 20th Aus union movement, most deaths served a higher purpose. Preventing more. OK it’s possibly by its use by date now but the Aus union movement between the 1870s and the 1970s wrung and wrangled with capital a pretty decent deal for workers by most first world standards. Everyone did better out of that semi-organised compact.
By all means beat up on Hardie and Hellicar, but they’re not the ones now doing the real damage to this unspoken compact between labour and capital in Australia theseadays.
And when is Opera Australia gonna realise the Snowy Mountain Project would make a great home bored epic?
Sweaty dancers with heavy machinery. Transgressive love affairs. Illegal stills and knife fights. Squint this way, it looks like Soviet heavy opera, squint that way it looks like Puccini on meth/grappa brewed underground.
And to me, that’s always been the beauty of Australia. A nation constantly tipped by economic reasons into a ruthless, effective and highly profitable global colony but constantly tugged the other way by a skeptical, hedonistic and pretty damn decent and pragmatic populace.
Australia. It’s not fucking perfect. But if you had a time machine, where you start with this place to make it so?
Jacques Chester, I’m not smearing the entire “business community”, if that is what it is. But Meredith Hellicar was embraced by her peers – she was a fellow of the Australian Institute for Company Directors, she was on many boards of listed companies, and she appeared to have a lot of friends in high places if her Medal is any guide.
Nabokov, you may not be aware of the bobcat dancing show in Mt Isa that featured in a recent Queensland music festival …
Oh, so the Queenslanders have got in on the act. I watched bobcat dancing at the Royal Adelaide Show years ago!
Well the Swedes and Koreans pushed it a bit further, but with crap dancing and indifferent music.
Then along came the Nipponese and French who really get techno-ananism.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqolwulVlsc
Sorry, the line read should be:
Then along came the Nipponese and French who really get techno-ananism.
Yeah, that’s OK.
Have to say I prefer the kit in this Franco-American techno-funk-dance collaboration.
Why aren’t all the directors of James Hardie still on other boards paying for it by being barred? or are they? So what if she’s a high achieving woman – she knew about it and didn’t act appropriately, one gathers, so to hell with her.
That gong from Howard should’ve tipped everybody off there was likely to be something rotten going on.
Parasites like Hellicar deserve to be publicly humiliated and financially ruined for their fundamental human indecency. Working people should take revenge against corporate criminals.
I like my beer cold, and my dandies indolent, thanks!
I disagree, and that’s why I offered sociopathology as an alternative. Sociopaths are often charming, accepted and very well liked. They also lack common sympathy — they can understand how other people feel, but they’re just not too fussed about it, except as a means to their own ends.
As a personality type it is very common amongst positions of power and influence. If there were a reliable test for it, I suspect you’d find sociopaths over-represented amongst top business leaders, politicians, union bosses, small business owners, sports stars etc etc.
My point is that you are saying that the business world endorsed Hellicar’s actions, as evidenced by her popularity. That is a non sequitor. They liked her because she was likable. There’s every possibility that outside of the James Hardie board (and they should all be held accountable) nobody knew what they were up to.
I don’t know if Hellicar got particular shit for being a woman, or because she was the figurehead of the whole shameful affair. It’s not as though Dick Pratt got a free pass for being a bloke, is it?
Hellicar’s gong from the Howard Govt is easily explained
- she was in the trainee Diplomats class of 76, with one Alexander Downer, with whom she has remained friends ever since, so when Downer became FM, he appointed her to a number of Boards/Advisory roles in DFAT. Against the ‘beat up’ trend of her ‘spectacular’ career, however, she is not the first in the class of 76 to prosper until she put a criminal conviction on her CV. That dishonor goes to Robert Scoble, convicted for child sex offences in Bangkok in 2004, and still Alexander’s closest friend from the class of 76. But now, will convicted Meredith call Alex and Robert as character witnesses when it comes to sentencing time – Alex has said nothing about Meredith for over a year, wonder what he knew back then?
She relinquished her FAT roles when she took her James Hardie’s retirement moneys off to Southern France to buy her vineyard estate – so it’ll be interesting to see if ACCC now goes after this valuable asset or her other properties in Australia – as proceeds of crime, won’t it?
Don’t hold your breath – pardon the pun!
Is it possible that Ms Hellicar is being singled out, not because of her gender as such, but because it represents a means of easy identification amongst a board that otherwise consists of basically interchangeable blokes in suits? The media and, through them, the public do seem to like a face to chuck darts at and, in a case of collective responsibility, I do not find it surprising that the most identifiable individual in the collective getting the honour.
As for the expectation that female executives will be, somehow, “better” than male ones, I dunno about anyone else, but, over the course of the last 30 years or so, I’ve lost count of the number of accquaintances with feminist leanings who have assured me with apparent sincerity of belief, that they would be, regardless of necessity. Should I not have believed them?
TIB, Hellicar was the longest-standing Director and eventually the Chair of the Board, which does entail special responsibilities. James Hardie is certainly being singled out, there are many rogue corporations out there, but on the other hand James Hardie’s beahviour was uniquely brazen. CSR, for example, opted to settle asbestos claims and at no point tried to move the entire company to another country.
Jacques Chester, Hellicar was not just popular, she was respected. She served on many boards which indicates that many corporations thought she was an appropriate person to direct the interests of share-holders. Indeed, one could argue she was simply taking an extremely diligent view on what protecting shareholder’s interests might entail. Morally, ASIC and the courts might have a problem with the Board of James Hardie trying to dodge their responsibilities to workers, but they had no legal issue with it. The Board, which included Hellicar, was eventually taken to the courts by ASIC for lying in their press release about the Foundation being “fully funded” when in fact it never was.
As chair of the Hardie board, Hellicar would have been singled out even if her given name had been Melvin – it goes with the job.
I don’t think some of you have understood what I was on about back there.
I am not saying that Hellicar was singled out for special opprobrium for this case because she was a woman. I’m saying that these cases, in general, attract complaints of “but, we expected women to be better once in positions of power.” Which, to its credit, this thread hasn’t done, but I was remarking on an instance of it in the media. The idea is still floating around out there, and incidents like these reveal it for the furphy that it is.
It was purely an interesting tangent and sorry for derailing the thread a bit.
It’s not as though Dick Pratt got a free pass for being a bloke, is it? Nope he got one co’s he’s goin’ to heaven.
Whenever people describe the Sydney Institute as Right-Wing Henderson pops up and provides a list of left wing speakers they have had. Despite his whiny manner and his own right-wing opinions I’ve always found it reasonable convincing.
However, I’m not sure how he’ll wiggle out of this one. The fact that corporations didn’t boot anyone associated with James Hardie years ago is to their shame, but not surprising. For a think tank to keep a board member on demonstrates utter moral bankruptcy.
Er . . . like literally as I typed.
Caroline, let that be a lesson to you.
No more blithely typing things that cannot be reversed once you press the “submit” button!
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25272600-2702,00.html
“An international drug company made a hit list of doctors who had to be “neutralised” or discredited because they criticised the anti-arthritis drug the pharmaceutical giant produced………..We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live,….”
Helen @ 34:
And the idea is still getting pushed too. A couple of years ago I went to a women in the workplace talk (men were welcome to attend) and the woman guest speaker spent some time explaining why women are naturally better managers than men.
Jacques @ 29
I’m sympathetic to the idea that business leaders have sociopath tendencies but I don’t think it is a complete explanation.
I don’t deny a big ego or a sense of ambition is required to make it to the top. But the nature of the politics that you need to play can corrupt. I’ve seen more than once, a good natured person change for the worse once the mantle of management was passed unto them. The expectations of the position crushed their sense of fairness.
Then again I have come across managers with big egos who still retained a great sense of empathy. Very easy to work with and fair.
But there does seem to be a point in a career where in rarefied realms, you do not suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Stuffed up a company’s fortune? Well why not joint our board?
Like Nabakov @ 20 I think Australia is a pretty decent place that in general values human life, but on the box tonight – 7,000 work-related deaths each year.
It seems the psychopathy is often used interchangeably with sociopathy and should be distinguished from psychopathology which is used for mental illness or mental distress, but “may also be used to denote behaviours or experiences which are indicative of mental illness.”
And everyone who used these terms should consult a dictionary first
Caroline
Before he shuffled off, Dick Pratt scored a huge fine and public opprobrium. How many million $ should Ms Hellicar pay, would you reckon (and her fellow directors)??
Dick Pratt
Could eat no fat
… well, he could, actually.
Well frankly Ambi, I reckon she and the others responsible should go to jail and James Hardies should be liquidatad and barred from trading.
OK, fair enough Caroline.