Time for the triple top-line
By Linda Vergnani©

After artist Gracius Broinowski immigrated to Australia from Poland in 1857, he travelled the countryside painting and etching marvellously detailed pictures of indigenous birds and mammals.

His books include the six volume work The Birds of Australia, which illustrates over 700 species. It contains precise scientific details of the different species but also vivid personal observations. For example Gracius describes the rose-breasted cockatoo as a "true dandy" which retires to the shade "lest its gorgeous plumage should be faded by the sun's too ardent plumes". His books are now valuable collectors item.

Gillis Broinowski, President of the NSW Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife. Photo Linda Vergnani

Today his great, great-grandson Gillis Broinowski, president of the Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife, attributes much of his interest in conservation to his family heritage. Gillis owns copies of all of his ancestor's books.

His father was also very interested in conservation and his mother's family, the Katers, were a major factor in Australian agriculture. "My mother's brother Mick Kater always pointed out all the native varieties of grass and told me what they were. My cousin Rod Kater runs a number of farms where he concentrates on native species of pasture."

Sitting in his Sydney city office, surrounded by skyscrapers, the former president of Australian Business Limited has a curriculum vitae that few would associate with the natural environment. He is managing director of Vielun Pty Ltd which has a portfolio of Australian companies plus manufacturing and agricultural interests. He also chairs Chancellor Equity Management.

He was previously a director of Peko Wallsend Operation Pty Ltd, which has substantial coal, copper, zircon and tungsten mining interests. Only his involvement in cattle farms plus his previous directorship at Sims Consolidated, which is involved in metal recycling, bespeaks some environmental connection.

Yet he says it is precisely his background in mining, scrap metal and agriculture which have focused him on sustainability.

"Yes, I have been involved in mining and agriculture. Without trying to be a goody-goody I would suggest that these two experiences make me very mindful of conservation and the need for it. If you are to run a profitable agricultural or mining operation, unless you have the right principles of conservation in mind, you are unlikely to have a sustainable enterprise."

He says modern businessmen realise that if they do not operate in a sustainable way they will be prosecuted or their businesses will fail... "I don't agree with the term triple bottom line. I don't think it exists."

Gillis maintains the real challenge is the "triple top line" – the income line, the output line, what the company sells and how it deals with customers, the environment and society. If the company operates in an environmentally friendly manner and does not abuse its labour force then it projects that at the top line. This in turn ensures it satisfies shareholders with a healthy bottom line – its profits.

He became involved with the Foundation as a director ten years ago, wanting to "give something back to the community".

Appointed president in 1998, Gillis believes the appeal of the Foundation is that it is one of the "few non-political conservation organisation solely devoted to the protection of Australian fauna, flora and heritage. Most of the organisations are fairly political, we are not."

An exceptionally tall man, who at 6 foot 7 inches nearly scrapes the tops of doors, Gillis is known as highly personable and a "fantastic networker" by his colleagues. Leonie Gale, executive officer of the Foundation says: "He's a nice man, easy going, very straight forward, uncomplicated. He's a man of high integrity, of high personal values, a very moral person."

His office is filled with photographs of his second wife, public relations consultant Michelle Broinowski, his three children ranging in age from 34 to 8, and his grandchildren.

Gillis grew up on a farm at Cobbity, which despite its closeness to Sydney still had "wombats, wallabies, echidnas and lots of platypus."

Sent as a reluctant boarder to Cranbrook School, he was not enamoured of academic education. He became an accounts clerk and went straight into business starting off with agricultural machinery, then scrap metal recycling and later mining.

Early in his career he bought up a company started by David Daniel and PA Yeomans, inventors of the Key-line plan, a method of ploughing with a chisel-like implement that created minimum damage to the soil and conserved water.

Later, as an executive at Peko Wallsend, he took a particular interest in the rehabilitation and reforestation associated with mineral sand and coal mining. "I was fascinated by them. You don't clean up a mine afterwards, you do it as you go along. The only way of doing a sustainable operation is doing the conservation at the same time as the income comes in."

In his two year term as President of Australian Business Limited, which has just ended, he spread the conservation message. Recently he advised a visiting Chinese business delegation that if they wanted to sell their products overseas then they should ensure that they only imported timber from places with world-approved programmes for reforestation.

Gillis says in the past year the Foundation has benefited from an unusually high number of bequests. Although it often funds NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service projects, the Foundation is not restricted to these. "We can put money into conservation projects that might be involved with private enterprise or another department or institution."

Among the Foundation's great achievements has been saving the Lord Howe woodhen, which is now thriving.

He says the Foundation is interested in financing things it does well, like funding walkways which give disabled people access to parks. An example is the walkway between South Head and Rose Bay.

"We are currently doing the Green Gully campaign because that will preserve some 13,000 hectares of land which is the habitat of the Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby, an endangered species."

"Another area that we are putting a whole new effort into is making it much more clear that we accept land donations and bequests for the purchase of land." He says such donations and bequests to the Foundation have allowed the extension and consolidation of national parks.

The Foundation has updated the manner in which donors can give land to comply with modern legislation. "Now is the time for people to donate land to the Foundation in a way that is tax-effective for them." [Click here for Donor Information].

• To view some of the illustrations and text from Gracius Broinowski's bird volumes click through to the Melbourne High School Library's Online Exhibition on this artist.

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