Governance news bites – 8 August

There have been a few media articles of particular relevance to governance in the past two weeks. Among the governance-related stories you may have missed are:

Tête-à-tête and 2x2 – Australian and New Zealand Climate Change and Finance Ministers meet

Australian and New Zealand Climate Change and Finance Ministers met towards the end of July in Brisbane. Relevant to directors and boards are statements on:

• co-ordinating approaches to sustainable finance
• exploring alignment on wider sustainable finance and policy
• investing in long-term emissions reduction opportunities for the agriculture sector

School boards have some homework to do – managing complaints

The Chief Ombudsman has urged school boards to take parents’ concerns seriously. He emphasises school boards have an obligation to follow the complaints process outlined in the Education and Training Act 2020, including recording their decision-making process to demonstrate how they had considered options in reaching a decision.

Building board capability – the dilemma with specialist directors

A recent paper on specialist directors highlights the benefits of having people on boards with AI, climate change, sustainability and cybersecurity expertise. Key themes in the paper are:

• • No board will ever be big enough to have specialist directors on every possible topic a board has to consider
  • There are issues with boards deferring to a specialist director (e.g. on climate change) when there needs to be collective and well-informed decision making. This is a similar issue to those that arise with specialist board committees. There is also the potential for "board washing"
  • There are issues with courts and other regulators (in the US, as they have done with Boeing) specifying the sorts of expertise that should be on the board