Write a letter to your MP

29 October 2025

This past weekend, I attended a Writers’ Festival where, while discussing the proposed massive expansion of Woodside Energy’s gas operations in Western Australia, a well-known independent Senator advised we should write to our elected representatives in parliament.

His response reflects conventional wisdom: if you want government to do something, write your representatives a letter. If thousands of your fellow citizens write the same thing, the thinking goes, representatives will ignore the fossil fuel industry’s daily lobbying, and government will do what you ask.

I thought about it later.  What would the people’s letters need to say to stop the expansion? The Senator didn’t say.  In fact, he and his fellow panellists offered very little hope.  They explained how Woodside practically owns both major political parties and the State of Western Australia.  Their lobbyists constantly fill the halls of state and federal government, often spreading disinformation. It’s a tall order for even thousands of letters to defeat that kind of power.

Another thing the panellists didn’t say, or maybe didn’t realize, was that the Woodside situation is a symptom of a much greater disease.  It’s an example of democratic government no longer being able to protect the public interest from socially irresponsible corporate behaviour. 

Liberal democracy protects freedom.  Behaviour that isn’t specifically prohibited by law is permitted—even if it is immoral, unethical or even highly destructive.  When a company or industry is discovered inflicting severe harm on the public interest, it’s the function of government to step in and pass a law to make it stop before the harm gets out of hand.  When big companies are able to block that legislation, the harm accumulates.  Democracy no longer works because government can’t do its job, protect the public from severe harm.

The most obvious example is corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that cause climate change. We’ve known about global warming and the dangers it poses for decades.  The U.N. holds COPs every year. When the delegates to a COP return home to try to pass new laws to reduce the threat, they find fossil fuel companies and their lobbyists ready to frustrate the passage of new legislation.  When they succeed, the environment goes another year unprotected, carbon builds up in the atmosphere and we’re one year closer to a catastrophe.

The emission of GHGs isn’t the only situation where industry continues to inflict severe harm on the public interest legally, because industry frustrates the passage of laws to make it illegal.  The problem is more widespread.

Corporations in a number of industries have figured out how to game democracy to continue businesses that kill millions of people annually, violate human rights and trample on the dignity of employees.   If we don’t take preventative action soon, social media and artificial intelligence companies will intensify an already growing problem.  Their business models set the people of our communities against each other--sometimes irreconcilably.

So, what should you write in your letters?  What should they say to stop Woodside’s expansion and better protect the public interest from business inflicting severe harm? Trying to stop poor corporate citizenship one project at a time is mostly a losing strategy. Even when successful in one place, it just moves the damage elsewhere.  A more systemic solution must be found and implemented, not just in Australia, but everywhere. 

It’s time to try changing corporate governance—the way corporations think. Few people know it, but corporations wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t a law providing for their creation and telling the people responsible for managing them how to think.  All over the world, it tells directors the same thing.  They must always “act in the best interests of the company.” 

That’s it.  No mention is made of protecting the public interest. In other words, the law tells corporations to pursue self-interest but doesn’t give them anything resembling a human conscience.  It tells directors their role is to only look out for the company.

Your letter should say you want this system to change.  What worked a hundred years ago, when companies were smaller and used primitive technology, no longer does.  Modern corporations are much more capable of inflicting severe harm.  Having this capacity means its important now to neutralize any inclination they have to continue inflicting such harm when it is discovered. 

The law needs a simple change. Ask your representatives to add these words to the duty of directors in the corporate law "to act in the best interests of the company”:

But not at the expense of severe damage to the environment, human rights, the public health and safety, the dignity of employees or the wellbeing of the communities in which the company operates.

Adding these words will plug a huge hole that a few companies have opened in democracy.  Except for those companies, their addition shouldn’t be controversial or partisan.  They don’t affect the profit motive.  They don’t require onerous reporting obligations.  They don’t add taxes.

Directors should never think their company has an inherent right to inflict severe harm on the public interest until a law is passed to make them stop. They must stop any such harm when it is discovered and be vigilant in preventing its occurrence—regardless of the adverse effect on their company’s interests. 

Until our elected representatives change the law to require it, the current situation will continue.  Democracy will fail to deliver on its promise, and a few companies will continue to make money at the expense of severe damage to the environment and other elements of the public interest.  The harm will accumulate to even more dangerous levels.

The letter we should write to our elected representatives should say we want this to stop. In the 21^st century, companies ought to be able to do both: make money and protect the public interest at the same time.