April 11, 2005

Golden circle joins a growing list of businesses to walk away from cooperative principles and seek stock market listing. Others that have converted to investor forms of business include NRMA and AMP.

"Australian governments' support this decline of cooperatives and mutuals, says Mark Lyons, Adjunct Professor of Social Economy at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). "This is in stark contrast to comparable countries overseas such as the UK and Canada, where governments support coops, mutuals and social economy enterprises as an important source of institutional investment and renewal."

But if governments in Australia have failed to generate an interest in the idea of linking entrepreneurial economic activity with social outcomes via new forms of mutualism, does it also follow that the principle of mutuality or co-operation is no longer espoused or understood within the population as a whole?  According to Lyons, people in Australia do not share their governments’ disdain for mutualism.

Professor Lyons and Andrew Passey, Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for Co-operative Research and Development (ACCORD) argue that the public is ready to back a greater role for social enterprises across broad areas of the Australian economy.

"Support for social enterprise and institutional reform is long overdue in Australia," says Passey. "We need to bolster the role of co-operative enterprises in the Australian economy and in areas of the 'public services'. This would certainly find favour among a significant proportion of the population."  

Lyons and Passey will use data from the 2003 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA) to compare current trends in Australia with similar countries overseas, at the ACCORD Co-operative Attitudes and Institutional Innovation in Australia seminar, Sydney, Thursday 14 April 2005.

Further Information:
Suzanne Henderson, Communications Manager, ACCORD, Ph 0407 104 268