Claude Walker

I basically changed my definition of what I wanted to invest in for ethical reasons.

But I still, for example, would have, I personally avoid coal.

And so that's a point where people can disagree.

So if you're going to look at an ETF that is an ethical ETF, one of the classic things over the years and where you have sort of problems with this kind of thing is there might be somebody who actually like me doesn't want to invest in coal, but they've invested in ETFs

that does invest in coal or coal adjacent things, or actually here's a real life example is banks that lend massively to coal mines, right?

And so that's why it's the beta shares ethical ETFs for me.

They've always had an appeal to me because they were the first, as I understand it, they were the first ETFs like Effie and Fair.

They were the first ETFs in Australia that said,

hey, we're not going to own shares in the big banks because they're funding so much fossil fuels.

Whereas previously, for example, Australian Ethical, which is a super fund, I own shares in Australian Ethical and have still some super with them, but they have historically invested in banks.

So if something like that matters for you, you've got to go and look at the different competing products out there and find their product disclosure statements and figure out what their actual...

what their actual policies are and see which one aligns better to you.

That was sort of like a real-life example of that to me because I've always think I prefer the BetaShares one, but I guess my inertia meant that I left my superannuation with Australian Ethical and also they're quite good managers.

Yeah, well, that's exactly right, Kate.

And the thing is, we all have different priorities as well.

Just so if you're going to do it in an ETF or in a fund, you're never going to have a final say on every single company.

So it's really, in some ways, it's about if you're going to do ethical investing like that, then it's just about finding good fits and

at that point your priorities matter as well.

Like for some people, it might just be, look, I actually am not that stringent and ethical investor, but as it happens, like I've seen that the absolute havoc tobacco has wreaked on my own family, perhaps their own grandfather or father or mother died of lung cancer or something like that.

When they were very young, these tragedies happen.