Large institutional shareholders have the influence and the time needed to enable them to raise their concerns directly with companies' boards, out of the public eye.

Small shareholders have very few opportunities to bring their concerns to the board, or to discover that others may share the same concerns. The Annual General Meeting is the only regular forum available. The individual shareholder is isolated, and his or her questions heard only by those attending the meeting. After the meeting only the Chairman's views are published.

Some shareholders will not invest in certain industries on principle, feeling that those industries, whilst being legal, excessively exploit other people or their environment.

Most industries face some environmental and social dilemmas, yet they provide essential products and services. Shareholders in these companies, while recognising the value of their companies, may be worried about some aspects of their activity. These shareholders wish to see improvement in the treatment of ethical, environmental, or social aspects of some company activities. We would like to see options for improvement actively discussed and pursued. We see withdrawal of our investment from these companies as a rather negative last resort.

The Ethical and Green Shareholders Groups provide a network which smaller shareholders can use to air their concerns and suggestions, and together coordinate more effectively to make representation to their respective boards, and, importantly, to their fellow shareholders.

If over 100 shareholders can get organised together they can place resolutions on the AGM notice paper. It is a great challenge to get so many shareholders together to do this, distributed as they are across Australia and even overseas, and unknown to one another.

When shareholders do work together, and reasonable resolutions are put up, we find that very many more shareholders support them.

Some of the issues raised by the Ethical Shareholders Groups may be consequences of government action or inaction, which then influences the actions of companies. For example, where an otherwise efficient local industry is threatened by dumping of products from countries using exploited labour, and where no environmental standards are observed. In those cases the company in which we hold shares may only be able to compete by dropping standards to the same lowest common denominator unless compensatory tariffs are imposed. In these cases the shareholders may be able to add to pressure upon Governments to ensure the health of their industry, employees, and long term environmental standards.

Many shareholders have an interest in promoting legislation in such areas as container deposits, identification of materials, provision of recycling services.

Many shareholders are concerned by the extent of corporate influence on governments, by way of political donations, support for industry lobbyists, public relations, and ideologically based 'think tanks'. Corporate funds allocated for these purposes generally reflect the views of the board members, rather than the spread of interests of the wider group of shareholders, employees, suppliers, customers, the community and the environment.

Typical concerns include the ethical and environmental issues involved in the:

• sourcing of raw materials
• safety and sustainability of manufacturing processes used
• nature of wastes produced, methods and extent of re-use, recycling and disposal
• ethics of relationships with other stakeholders, including employees, communities and environment
• quality of information provided to the media by our companies
• donations to political parties, lobby groups, and ideological 'think tanks' by our companies.

If you are concerned for the long term environmental and social future of our companies and of Australia, please ask your parents, other relatives, and friends, who may share your views, whether they have shares in any of the companies for which Ethical/Green Shareholders Groups have formed.

Concerned shareholders can influence their companies by:

• voting in favour of ethical and environmental resolutions by marking their ballot sheets and posting them back to the company
• making proxies available to those who can attend company meetings, especially AGMs
• supporting environmental and ethical resolutions presented to these meetings (it requires over 100 genuine shareholders to get a resolution on the agenda)
• suggesting improved practices
• letter writing, to the Chairman, CEO and senior management
• if satisfactory answers can't be obtained from our companies, letter writing to politicians & newspapers.