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

The Greens have a long history of calling for a curb on executive remuneration. I cannot go beyond former Prime Minister Rudd's description of some of the packages going to CEOs in 2008 as 'obscene'. And obscene they are. An example of that is Rio Tinto's Tom Albanese, who has over $9 million in the latest package, which is a 328 per cent increase in one year. Ask some of the workers in Rio Tinto how they would like a 328 per cent increase, let alone a multi­million dollar package. I am sure we would find that they would all like that sort of consideration. Don Voelte, who is about to go back across the Pacific from Woodside, is getting over $8 million. It would be interesting to see if there is a severance package there. The Commonwealth Bank's CEO is getting over $16 million; that is a 75 per cent increase in one year, and this is a bank that still charges pensioners $2 to withdraw $20 if they have their account with a rival bank. Then there is BHP Billiton, where Marius Kloppers is the recipient of $11 million.

The community has a right to be very concerned about the growing gap between the richest and the poorest in this country. It is something we Greens speak a lot about on a global basis. The number of people on the planet who cannot feed themselves—who are hungry—at the moment has gone from 800 million to 1,000 million this year, but we are here talking about executives who are on packages of more than $2 million, $5 million, $10 million or $15 million in one year. All of us are born onto the planet equal, but human society—and that includes in democratic countries—is allowing the growth of an egregious difference in the way we and our fellow human beings, inside and outside this country, are treated.

The average CEO in Australia earns over 100 times the average wage, and executive remuneration is going up faster than average wages. That means the average CEO in this country is taking home each year more than 100 times the income of people who are on the average wage. There is no way that that can be justified. I know we will hear from the opposition—and it has been the standard mantra from business itself—that you have to pay extraordinary and obscene packages to get the best talent. That does not bear scrutiny, because the best talent—and there is a lot of discussion about this in corporate management circles these days—has a very clear human dimension to it. It is not just talking about profit lines and management regimes; it is about treating workers within your own aegis with sympathy, as human beings and as people who effectively keep corporations going every bit as much as any CEO may do.

When we go back to looking at how out of kilter this is, the total remuneration of a chief executive of a top-50 company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange was $6.4 million last year, in 2010—$6.4 million. Here we are in a cycle of struggle as far as government is concerned, looking at making things harder for people with disabilities or families who have youngsters at home and are dependent upon government supple­ments, because there is not money in the kitty—and why isn't there money in the kitty? Amongst other reasons, it is because the two-speed economy means the miners and the mining sector are not only not paying their way but making it more difficult for everybody's kitty. Up go interest rates because of these multibillion-dollar profits. Up has gone the dollar because of these multibillion-dollar profits. Much of those profits is being exported overseas. We Greens are in favour of free enterprise, but that means free enterprise which is regulated through the democratic system by this parliament. We do not see in this legislation the required and responsible option of saying to CEOs, 'You can have multimillion-dollar take-home packages, provided they are not more than 30 times the average take-home pay of people in your enterprise.'