Ep 45. Will It Actually Help? Qiulae Wong on What the Opportunity Party Would Change for NZ's SMBs

That would be elevating the value of social environmental impacts to the same value that we value economic, commercial, profit and loss.

So how do we put our impact on the environment on the same footing as our impact on whether we make a profit or not as a business, or how do we value the impact that a business has on its workers or on the consumers that it delivers for, on the communities that exists within, on equal footing to how much money or profit that delivers to shareholders.

Ultimately, I think that when I was working in the B Corp movement, one of the great quotes that I loved, that I really, that I learned, and I love to spout now is that this pursuit of short-term profit for shareholders is kind of the source code error of capitalism.

That wasn't the intention of the way capitalism was designed and was meant to be delivered.

But nevertheless, there has been this intense focus on delivering short-term returns to shareholders.

But actually, that doesn't deliver well for businesses in the long term.

If you just focus on that, that doesn't mean you're going to be a good business in the long term.

And it doesn't mean that you're going to deliver good outcomes for society.

And so I think if we can elevate that sense of purpose, that sense of impact on people and on the environment alongside profit and delivery, you know, deliver of profits to shareholders, then we will have far fewer social and environmental impacts to have to deal with as a society.

All those things are important, right? If we look at the current situation where we've got the government with its nine targets that are, in my opinion, kind of like grabbing nine darts and throwing them at a dartboard and you end up with wherever they land.

There's no real central theme to those.

And, you know, we all need an environment that is kind to human life to hang around.

so that we can make it to the future.

So, you know, there's no point spending our time just purely chasing the money and the returns.

So with B Corp, and you've worked with businesses like Kiwi Bank and Sharesies here in New Zealand, what does that require of a business? And how does that show up in your policies that you've got today?

Yeah, so I guess with B Corp, It's about managing risk and about managing your impact, understanding your impact.

So if you take environmental impact, for example, there are multiple standards around your emissions, how much waste you produce.

It's about measuring those things, putting a value on it, and then looking at the risk that that poses to society and then making business decisions based on those things.

Same with people.

If you don't pay your people well, that poses a risk to society because you're underpaying labor or not valuing the role that people play in your businesses and in your community.

There are clear standards around what best practice looks like around social and environmental impact.

And I think if all businesses operated to that standard, then we would have far fewer social and environmental impacts to have to deal with as a society.

But the reality is what I found when I was working in the B Corp movement was you find yourself working with maybe 1% or 2% of businesses that want to do things better.

But unless we mandate that across the whole business community, we can't just rely on a few good businesses to do the right thing.

We have to make this the norm.