By Anna Patty

Updated April 3, 2023 — 2.12pmfirst published at 5.00am

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Australian companies are walking back their public commitments to climate action as part of a growing global trend known as “green hushing”.

With Australian regulators now cracking down on alleged greenwashing, companies have been put on notice that they face an increased risk of legal action for false claims.

The biggest superannuation fund in the country, AustralianSuper, removed its climate report from its website on March 22. The copy on the website where the report used to sit now says: “We are currently updating our climate change report. A new version will be available soon.”

A “net zero by 2050” fact sheet, which included a commitment to active ownership to drive climate action, was removed from AustralianSuper’s website in March.

An AustralianSuper spokesman said the fund continually reviews and updates its website to comply with a “rapidly changing regulatory and investment environment”. “The updated disclosures on the website reflect the Fund’s active stewardship of its assets in relation to climate change,” he said.

UniSuper recently removed a reference to its commitment to “continually improve our disclosure of our carbon footprint and the ‘glide-path’ to net zero” which appeared in its 2022 climate risk report in a revised 2023 version. References to how the fund calculates its carbon intensity and more than 10 pages that outline the...

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