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Dr Bronwyn King
Around 70% of Australia’s superannuation funds have already dumped tobacco investments from their portfolios, largely due to the lobbying efforts of Tobacco Free Portfolios (TFP), fronted by Victorian oncologist Dr Bronwyn King.
And now the organisation has won Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) approval for its verified Tobacco Free Pledge logo, which will signal to potential investors that a fund manager or financial institution is against investing in tobacco manufacture.
There will be three variations of the logo which will indicate that either the fund manager or financial institution does not have direct or indirect investments in companies involved in tobacco manufacture or that they have committed to divest of these within two years.
According to TFP’s website “Pension funds and other investment bodies can apply to use the Verified Tobacco-Free certification stamp, subject to audit, to publicly declare their tobacco-free position.”
Though it will be later in 2019 when the logo comes into regular use, Dr King’s organisation has made massive advances since the 2010 lightbulb moment when she realised the default for most superannuation investment funds – including her own – was to invest in tobacco.
What started as “a few conversations” grew into a few presentations, then a side interest that metamorphosed into “something that took a significant part of my time, then to a commitment to the cause, not just in Australia but around the world”, she told the limbic.
“We were first registered as not-for-profit in Australian in 2015 and the first impact globally was working with AXA, the global insurance giant and they went tobacco-free in early 2016”.