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

The Greens—I might say with some embarrassment, because we think even this proposal is out of kilter—will move to amend this bill so that there is a limit of 30 times put on the gap between executive salaries and the average worker. I ask you, Mr Acting Deputy President, and I ask every other senator: when you sit down and think about it, do you believe that executives do 30 times the amount of work of the average worker in any corporation? The answer is: no, they do not. Then do you believe that executives who have had the privilege of getting to the top should not have a qualification which says they understand their workers enough to be able to share the largesse of the corporation so that they do not get more out of the corporation than their work warrants—or, to put it the other way, that the average workers in the corporation are not going home struggling to make ends meet while the executive is working out how to spend a multimillion-dollar take-home package that is more than 30 times that of the average worker in the corporation? Common sense, common decency and an egalitarian approach to the way our society works demand that we seriously look at this extraordinary overrun of the executive pay gravy train, driven up front by executives and boards themselves. From 2001-2010 executive pay rose by 130 per cent, but average weekly earnings rose only by 52 per cent. That is not taking into account real amounts because that is even more startling. On a percentage basis executive salaries are rising at three times that of average workers. Over the last financial year executive pay rose by an average of almost $1 million—$18,000 per week. That is the increase in what Kevin Rudd called 'obscene packages'. Over the same period the average wage of full-time workers rose by just $3,200, or $62 per week. So there you have executives getting $18,000 per week extra and the average workers getting $62. How can we entertain facilitating that sort of increase? The legislation we have before us today says that it will empower shareholders in corpor­ations, if they have a 25 per cent vote twice against executive packages, to have a 50 per cent vote to throw out the board. But it does not really tackle this issue, and the Labor minister and the coalition representative opposite know that—it is not going to occur. The obscenity of these packages cuts right across our national ethos of a fair go.

Company profits as a share of national income are at record levels, but the wages share of national income is at the lowest level since 1984. How can that be? I can assure you that this legislation will not address that problem. In the past I and my colleagues have proposed in this Senate—and Adam Bandt, the member for Mel­bourne, in the House of Repre­sen­tatives—measures which include a cap on total executive remuneration of $5 million to stop the excesses of the past decade. That limit is more than 10 times the Prime Minister's salary. Is anybody in this Senate or the House going to get up and try to explain why any executive of any mining corporation or banking outfit in this country should be paid more than 10 times the Prime Minister's salary? No, nobody in the coalition or Labor ranks will do that, but that is effectively what they will all vote for if they turn down the Greens amendment today—and I am not holding my breath.