Two can play the protest game

Accountability is something which cuts both ways -- if you are going to demand it, then you had better practice it yourself.

And, as every child in a schoolyard knows, if you invade somebody else's turf, then you had better be prepared for them to invade yours.

Environmentalist and other single interest groups have been developing a new tactic -- buying shares in targeted companies and disrupting meetings of shareholders to raise the profile of their particular cause.

Major companies, like Rio Tinto and Norths, have found their annual general meetings turned into politicised meetings.

People who buy shares are normally aiming to increase their wealth.  (And, if you have privately-funded superannuation, then you are a shareholder).

Shareholder-protesters, however, are about destroying wealth by stopping otherwise profitable projects.

If they are using their personal funds to do that, that is their business -- and they will, no doubt, be voted down by the other shareholders.

But if environmentalist organisations and other bodies are using the funds of the organisation, that is entirely different matter.

Directors and public officers of organisations have fiduciary duties to look after the funds of their members.  Which is fine so long as the membership have approved expenditure of their funds in that way -- but very much not fine if they haven't.

Non-government organisations have been developing pretensions to represent "civil society", the broad community -- even to the extent of claiming equivalent standing to sovereign governments in international forums.

But who are these people?  Who elected them?  How are they accountable?

Environmental concern should not be owned by any particular ideology.

Broad-based environmental organisations should favour of whatever works to improve the environment, not dressing up failed socialist projects with a new "green" garnish.

Indeed, bodies like the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Australian Consumer Association used to be much more mainstream in their make-up and outlook before they were taken over by zealots looking for new homes.

What if people affected by "green socialism" struck back?  What if shareholders, farmers, workers in industries targeted by green protesters, members of mainstream political parties and so on started joining organisations like the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Wilderness Society and demanding the levels of accountability for those organisations they have been so quick to demand of others?

(Greenpeace is not worth bothering with, ordinary members have no effective power in that centrally-controlled multinational).

What if such organisations returned to how they were?

Then we would start to see a genuine civilising of so-called civil society.

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