Just what were the James Hardie board of directors thinking when they moved the company off shore?
The company's headquarters has officially been in the Netherlands since a controversial move in late 2001 to set up a new parent company there.The company said the move was mainly due to tax efficiencies, but the asbestos victim's group accuse it of moving offshore to escape liabilities in Australia.
Did they really think that asbestos compensation claims would just go away? That the victims would simply shrug their shoulders when they realised that the compensation fund money had run out?
These people must live in a parallel universe if they thought that there'd be no fallout for the company or their own reputations resulting from the shabby way they treated the victims of their asbestos laden building products.
Isn't it interesting when the proverbial hits the fan the boardroom's glass ceiling disappears? The chairman retires due to ill health and a woman is selected as his replacement. Although I'm not suggesting that she isn't qualified to hold the job, I do wonder if the boardroom boys' club that usually holds sway in large companies would have voted her in if it were business as usual.
I wish Meredith Hellicar luck in her new thankless job. A word of advice though; you would do your company and yourself a large favour if you simply apologised to the victims for your company's past actions. It doesn't sound good when, as you did recently on the ABC AM program, you used the 'We weren't there when it happened' defence. Take it on the chin, do the right thing by the victims, and move on.
