Our corporate governance approach and policies are outlined in our 2008 Annual Financial Report and are available on our website.

Over the past year, we have refreshed a number of policies:

• Code of Conduct and Ethical Behaviour
• Privacy, Operational Risk, Compliance
• Government Relations.

Risk management
Our risk management team seeks to identify risks at early stages via:

• Strategic risk profiling exercises
• Audits of corporate processes and analysing financial and operational risk.

The risk profiling process involves our risk team engaging with the senior leadership team and other key managers within the organisation, to identify and assess organisational risk. An assessment of key risks is presented to the Board annually, with active management and monitoring of risks throughout the year by our Compliance, Audit and Risk team. The non-financial risks identified during the past year through our risk profiling exercises have been discussed in this report.



Political donations and Government relations
At Stockland we seek to be highly ethical in all our dealings with Government. Like many companies, however, we have, in the past, made donations to political parties under a Board approved policy framework, on a broadly bipartisan basis to support the democratic process.

We have now adopted a new policy of not making donations to politicians or political parties at any level of Government with effect from 1 July 2008. This new policy extends to payments for political fund-raising functions.

In adopting our new policy we are mindful that misconceptions about political donations could undermine our stakeholders’ view of the Company’s integrity. We expect that all of our projects are to be judged on their merits. It is important to us that both Government and all our stakeholders are clear about our approach.

Over the past year we gave $164,124 to State political parties in New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and Victoria and $1,000 each to Federal Labor and Liberal parties. We will make Australian Electoral Commission and state-based declarations.

We contribute to the public policy work of the Business Council of Australia, the Property Council of Australia, the Shopping Centre Council of Australia, the Urban Development Institute of Australia, the Residential Development Council and the Green Building Council of Australia and where appropriate, make direct submissions to Government beyond those of our industry bodies. Matters we have engaged with Government over the past year have included climate change, housing affordability and infrastructure provision.