Insights

The first mandatory climate reports are in. Some are embarrassing.

Luke Heilbuth reviews the first tranche of AASB S2 climate reports and finds a pattern of compliance over substance. Many boards treat the standard as a legal obligation rather than a strategic exercise, producing disclosures that obscure material risks rather than surface them.

The piece covers variability across early filers (Santos, AMP, Pepper Money and others), the resilience science underpinning the standard, and what the quality of first-year reporting signals about board-level understanding of climate risk.