Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the minister for that response, but it is right off the mark. We have been talking with the government. In fact, I have written a number of times to the Prime Minister on this matter over the last six months. It is a bit precious for the government to say now that they would welcome us working closely with them on this issue. The fact is that we have had no response from the government. If you are going to work on an issue it takes a two-way discourse. I am a little jaded with the evolved position whereby the crossbench just helps the government with all manner of issues—not least the responsible way in which we helped the government with its very contentious stimulus packages of tens of billions of dollars. I will talk a bit more about this tonight; I have got some very job-rich good amendments to those packages for the Australian taxpayer. But it is a two-way street. We also have constituencies and we also have good policy initiatives—not to be made just as additions to government legislation but to be considered seriously by government and, on this occasion, by the Prime Minister himself.

It appears as if the Prime Minister has taken for granted the very public and reasoned approach to this matter of extreme executive payments since he has been in office. I have certainly had no communication about it. We are not going to be taken for granted on everything down the line. We are very, very serious players and senators in every debate that comes before this place. We expect that the government would take seriously these amendments, which went to it in March—it is now May. Except for a visit from some officers from the Treasurer’s office yesterday, we have had no response. Now the minister is saying, ‘Pass this bill and work with us and we have sent it off to the Productivity Commission. I’m sure you’d have some good ideas to put into there.’ That is putting it on to a long-term trajectory. We have no date; we have no open process that is available here.

Senator Conroy said that my amendments do not go far enough. Well, there should be little problem in amendments that go some way towards fixing this issue, and the government should be supporting them. What is the minister asking me to do? Tighten down the salary cap of a million dollars to an Obamaesque level of US$500 million? I don’t think so. I think the amendments are not broad enough and the government has had ample time to consider what it might put forward to this chamber instead. But on the eve of this debate, instead of that, the Prime Minister announced that he was asking the Productivity Commission to look at the matter. Prior to that, he was getting a report to take to an entity in Europe before the G20 conference—they were going to look at it; Australia would have a submission there. This is being duck shoved by Prime Minister Rudd. He has the description of the greed and the obscenity right, but he is not taking the action. These Greens amendments safely take action—I do admit that it is not broad enough, but they at least take limited action—which is reasonable given the circumstances, and we insist upon them.