Thinking about ethical investing

Al – how does one go about getting PSS super into ethical investment?

To those who are disparaging of sustainable investments like it is somehow reducing pontential income, I have my super going into the PSS and split between ‘aggressive’ and ‘sustainable’ and the sustainable is topping the returns at 19% vs 16% for aggressive. Of all available pools, only the Australian shares only pool is doing better at 22.3%, but I personally think that’s a bit too specialised/risky.
http://www.pssap.gov.au/tools/investments/update_jan07.htm
Why is it that whenever someone talks of doing the right thing environmentally, there is always the assumption that this equates to more expensive?
What was it Benny Hill used to say about “don’t assume”?

Ethical investment is already available to the whole community. There is a Canberra company called Australian Ethical Investments which is a funds manager that manages unit trusts and super funds that invest in ethical things. Their ROI is competitive with the big fund managers – a fact acknowedlged by the big boys, most of whom have an ‘ethical’ brand unit trust in their portfolio. Australian Ethical has been around for well over ten years, so the concept is not new.

Make investment affordable? What do you mean? You can invest as much or as little as you like as an individual. It’s also easy to find investments that are guaranteed not to lose – talk to your friendly bank!

Good.

Great place to start as everything positive is supported by educated investors.

My problem (apart from Greenwashed ‘Sustainable investment”) is the elitism of this group of do gooders.

Yes, we want to save our world, and help the poor, but make investment affordable and accessable to Aussie battlers?

Why waste the time.

It is a complicated area, and invesment is a bigmoney gamble in the safest investments.

If the ACT Government can make Ethical and SRI available to the whole community they hold my vote.

If we applied that idea of ‘benefiting the community’ to taxes, how many would pay their rates in Canberra? Library users (0), schoolless communities (0), hospital patients feeding the meter (0), bus users (0, depending on the revised services)…

Perhaps they could have a think about what ‘ethical investing’ really means. I would propose a slightly altered definition, that being any investment that benefits the people of a given country (say, Australia for example) or area (such as the ACT). I think they should look for strongly performing investments that have some sort of impact on the people of ACT and region. This could include all sorts of things, but is probably an easier target to achieve than trying to choose stocks that have nothing to do with what most people see as a somewhat variable list of activities.