Jock Clough: From business leader to marine conservation warrior

Jock Clough doesn’t recall any lightbulb moment that thrust the prominent Perth businessman into his second calling as a conservation warrior. Rather, it was a slow awakening and the realisation from the 1990s onwards that the marine habitats he’d enjoyed all his life would need help to survive growing human pressures, habitat loss and climate change. “I basically changed my whole attitude to the ocean, going from thinking this big wonderful thing was something that we didn’t really need to worry about to thinking that we did need to be concerned,” Clough says. “Since then, I’ve done my bit with others to protect, conserve and preserve what we’ve got.” A successful and influential WA business figure through the 1980s and 1990s as chair of stockbroker Hartley Poynton and the family engineering company, Clough Ltd, Harold Clough’s eldest son retains extensive investments, including a small honey business. But while he still enjoys the cut and thrust of business, marine conservation is now his overriding passion. Set up in 2008, the Jock Clough Marine Foundation has directed more than $17 million into marine conservation in WA, funding research, education and projects in collaboration with the likes of the University of WA’s Oceans Institute, Andrew and Nicola Forrest, the Bennett family and the Australian Marine Conservation Society. One of its partnerships is with the Indigenous-operated organisation Tidal Moon in Shark Bay, which is using the foundation’s 24m research vessel, Marine 2, to help its mission to restore seagrass. Clough has reinforced his philanthropy with knowledge, going back to university 20 years ago after an encounter with a scientist over his understanding of tides underscored that passion for marine ecosystems wasn’t enough if he was going to make a difference. “I was arrogant enough to think that I was very knowledgeable about the ocean. She was quite blunt ... she said, ‘you know, Jock, you have to plug the gaps’,” he recalls. He took the advice to heart, doing a Masters of Marine Science at UWA over five years. “Not only did it equip me with a much better understanding about an area I was passionate about, it introduced me to scientists and academia. “I’d only really mixed with business people, and business and academia don’t really get on. “But when I actually joined their fraternity by doing a thesis, my respect for them went up significantly. “And I think they respected me because I wasn’t just the guy who threw a few dollars into the ring when they had a need, I was actually interested in understanding.” Clough reckons that combination of business experience and knowledge has served him well when hitting up corporate or wealthy donors and sponsors. “I’m on their wave length,” he says. “They may not have the same sort of interest in what I’m prosecuting, but I know how to talk to them. “And what they don’t want to see is their money pissed up against the wall ... they want to look me in the eye and make sure I’ve got skin in the game. “All the things that matter when you’re investing sort of matter in conservation.” The Masters, he hopes, also enables him to provide added insight and simplify some often complicated ideas for new potential backers. “Their attention span is five minutes, if you haven’t got them by then, you get the glazed look and the little glance at the watch, and you know you’ve lost them.” For all his conservation credentials, however, Clough’s beliefs aren’t fully aligned ideologically with the broader green movement. Notably, he backs gas as a transition fuel, arguing the State still needs the fossil fuel in the transition to renewable energy. It’s a stance totally at odds with the views of climate activists and he admits it “challenges” some of his foundation’s relationships. “We need to be pragmatic about hydrocarbons. Some of my collaborators get sensitive about gas developments; I’m not on their page, I think that’s too idealistic.” Reflective of its rising profile, the foundation expects to pack out its third annual WA World Oceans Day seminar in Fremantle on June 8.