A woke Woolworths may represent a greater threat to the survival of our free-market economy than the unlikely prospect of price controls emerging from the Albanese government’s predictable politically oriented enquiry into allegations of duopolistic supermarket price gouging. Unlike Professor Allan Fels’ half-baked referral (‘on the face of it, there seems to be the probability of overcharging’), there is unassailable substance behind increasing public concern at the woke takeover of Australia’s corporate leadership – with the risk that wokery and capitalism may ultimately prove incompatible. Any reading of its multitude of virtue-signalling public statements shows Woolworths (and its board of directors) in the front ranks of what the Institute of Public Affairs labelled as ‘Australia’s largest corporations representing the views of the cosseted, wealthy, inner-city elite’. And, as Rowan Dean editorialised on these pages on Woolworths’ cancelling of Australia Day, ‘pandering to leftist “social justice” causes [like] supporting the Voice, gay marriage or climate change’.

Woolworths, like so much of the big end of town these days, is run by a self-perpetuating professional managerial class that is dominated by the increasingly discredited anti-merit dogma of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and ruled by the holy writ of Environment, Social and Governance; in short, establishing the primacy of stakeholders over the risk-taking shareholders who own the company.

The significant financial recovery and corporate strengthening under nine years of retiring CEO Brad Banducci’s successful leadership provided the opportunity for the gradual implementation of Woolworths’ woke agenda. Its nine-person board of directors is dominated 5 to 4 by women. And when current CEO Brad Banducci is replaced in September by present head of Woolworth’s booming e-commerce operation, Amanda Bardwell, it will be six women, double the three males – unless a male or two can be found to restore the ‘equity’ that DEI supposedly requires.

But this is no ordinary board; academic qualifications are paramount. It is chaired  by highly qualified corporate lawyer Scott Perkins (a decade as a Woolworths director after leaving the local Deutsche Bank as a managing director) who is also chairman of Origin Energy and a director of Brambles. But one top corporate lawyer is apparently not enough to run a grocery, so for the past four years he has the boardroom company of fellow lawyer and non-executive director Michelle Brenner, a former managing director of Investec Bank and a director of Qantas and Telstra and who, cosily, is also on the Origin Energy board chaired by Perkins. The woke tentacles of Woolworth’s directors with other non-executive roles extend to banks (NAB, ANZ), Qantas and Telstra – all supporters of Albo’s failed Voice.

Naturally, all nine Woolworths directors are university graduates – aren’t all grocers? But at Woolworths, standards are even higher. So five have MBAs, and to reinforce access to consultancy skills, one previously worked at Boston Consulting, another at McKinsey. And for an added touch of diversity, seven of the nine-person board come from overseas – three from the US, two from New Zealand, one from Canada and one, CEO Banducci, from South Africa. When he is replaced by Australian Amanda Bardwell, the proportion of foreign-born on the board will still be a remarkable two-thirds.

The 18-member Group Executive that, under the CEO, actually runs Woolworths, is, like the board, bursting with qualifications – and diversity. Of the eight women and 10 men, six have MBAs, 12 are graduates, two are lawyers, one has a PhD, three, like Banducci, formerly were with Boston Consulting and one with McKinsey. And of the six from overseas, four, also like Banducci, are from South Africa.

But maybe Woolworths really does need a total, from both the board and the group executive, of 11 MBAs along with some former McKinsey and Boston Consulting partners and a couple of merchant banking managing directors, in view of the remarkable range in recent years of what often looks like a mergers and acquisitions (and disposals) organisation operating behind the facade of being a simple grocer. Woolworths has got into (and often out of) New Zealand, hotels, gambling, liquor retailing (Dan Murphy’s BWS) hardware (the Masters disaster), petrol, electronics retailing (the Dick Smith fiasco), insurance, pet foods, on-line marketing, a supply chain business, a media operation, a 75 per cent-owned analytic firm and even setting up its own venture capital arm. The estimated $3.5 billion overall loss from its failed attempt a decade ago to rival Bunnings in hardware and last month’s $1.5 billion write-down of its New Zealand business  along with another $200 million off the value of its BigW chain, may indicate the need for all these professional skills in these adventures.

The primacy of stakeholders (effectively society in general) over shareholders that is central to Woolworths’ woke agenda, is evidenced in the introduction to its latest annual report. This is a commitment to ‘create value for all of our stakeholders’ (no mention of shareholders) by ‘living our purpose and staying true to our core values’ in order to ‘meet the expectations of all of our stakeholders’ (of whom the shareholder-owners are only one of many). It restates Woolworths’ aim to accelerate the ‘addressing of societal issues’ and to ‘promote positive change’. Its partnership with Oxford Economics Australia is to examine the value of the societal outcomes of Woolworths’ actions ‘in order to prioritise strategic initiatives for greatest impact beyond 2025’.

Whatever broadening of the scope – and priorities – this will provide for the board to go on future social reform excursions, those it has already nominated in the latest annual report all exude virtue. Woolworths inclusion strategy ‘focuses on five pillars across: gender; LGBTQ+; First Nations; disability; and cultural inclusion. This mindset is central to the culture across our organisation’. Its support for the Uluru Statement from the Heart involves a commitment to ‘actively contribute to Australia’s reconciliation journey’.

Supporting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degrees involves addressing the risk that deforestation poses to climate change and nature loss. And in the context of its fresh beef supply chains, it is looking at ‘pathways to reduce the environmental impact of animal protein’ and exploring and expanding the diversity of protein options available on our shelves, including plant-based, food-technology solutions’.

However, as long as shareholders keep getting the benefit of reasonable growth and decent dividends, don’t expect them to complain about the woke dogma that pervades Woolworths. That is unless there are more customer revolts after what Banducci acknowledged to be ‘a misreading of the political environment’ in Woolworth’s ‘cancelling’ of Australia Day because, in part, of the ‘broader discussion about 26 January and what it means to different parts of the community’.

But maybe wokery could turn out to be the saviour of Western capitalist society. According to the hard left, the ‘virtue’ of woke is just a way to increase profits. So woke corporations are merely ‘woke-washing’ aimed to ‘re-legitimise capitalism after the excesses of the global financial crisis while leaving its exploitative nature unaltered… keeping us on the same trajectory of inequality and exploitation’, according to  UTS Professor Carl Rhodes. Nevertheless, I’d still prefer capitalism woke-free.