Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Corporations Amendment (Improving Accountability on Director and Executive Remuneration) Bill 2011 is a step forward in ensuring that shareholders and Australians generally have faith in the accountability of directors and senior executives of Australian companies and, most importantly, in the fairness of their pay. It does this not by regulation but by an approach that respects the need for firms to operate freely in the market, at the same time giving shareholders the power they need to make sure that senior executives truly earn their pay.

This is far from the only area in which this government shows a decisive preference for market based solutions over regulation, a preference one would hope would be more widely shared and appreciated by those opposite. I say 'appreciated' because, just listening to this debate in the last few days and last night particularly, my colleagues in the Labor government were portrayed as crazy red raggers living in some socialist nirvana: every morning we leap out of bed, flick through our copy of the little red book, read out our favourite passages, sing a few rounds of The Internationale and then march off to work under the fluttering banner of the Soviet flag.

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