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

You might wish that I would hold my breath but I am challenging you, when your turn comes again, to respond to this out-of-kilter situation. Look at this: a top marginal tax rate of 50 per cent on incomes of more than $1 million in a year is proposed by the Greens and everybody votes it down.

We also want a binding shareholder vote on company remuneration policy. We believe these measures are sensible and, if implemented, would have already started to rein in the executive salary imbalance that I have talked about. We know what the bill is about. I have put forward the preferred options that the Greens would be pursuing and we stick to our guns on it, because what we are proposing is eminently reasonable; in fact, it is far short of what we should have if we were to have a fairer system in place in this country.

The Greens support other measures in the bill to increase transparency with regard to executive remuneration. That includes increasing the transparency and account­ability with respect to the use of rem­uneration consultants; in particular, that such consultants report to non-executive directors or the remuneration committee. We also support addressing conflicts of interest that exist with directors and executives voting their shares on remuneration packages and agree that directors and executives with voting shares should not be allowed to vote on the remuneration reports.

We also back the components of the bill ensuring that remuneration remains linked to performance by prohibiting hedging of incentive remuneration; requiring share­holder approval for declarations of no vac­ancy at an annual general meeting; prohibit­ing proxy shareholders from cherry picking the proxies they exercise by requiring that any directed proxies that are not voted default to the chair, who is required to vote for the proxies as directed; and reducing the complexity of the remuneration report by confining disclosures in the report to the key management personnel.

These measures also go to implementing some of the principles of executive remun­eration agreed by the G20, nearly two years back, improving the way companies go about determining remuneration for executives and increasing transparency, which is at the heart of this legislation. But when it gets to the key—the actual definition of a limit to executive packages which are right off the show and getting worse—this bill is not going to address the problem. The Greens amendment will address the problem—and very modestly at that—but this bill will not do that. I will be moving the amendments in committee, and I will ask the other senators in the chamber to seriously consider those amendments. I can assure them that they will have the backing of the Australian people if the amendments are supported.