Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today I rise to continue my remarks on the Communications Legislation Amendment (Executive Remuneration) Bill 2017. The purpose of this bill is to put downward pressure on excessive salaries paid at Australia Post and the National Broadband Network, NBN. I have always intended that this bill would start the process to reduce excessive salaries paid by the taxpayer. In 2016, eight people at Australia Post were paid a total of nearly $14 million, including the managing director, who was paid $5.6 million. In that same year, Australia Post returned just $20 million as a dividend to government and had undisclosed plans to sell the iconic GPOs in capital cities. These assets were previously agreed to be held in trust for the people of Australia. When the Sydney GPO was sold to Singaporean billionaires we were told the money would be invested in people and services at Australia Post. My view is that these assets should not have been sold. The Labor government appointed Mr Fahour as the Managing Director of Australia Post and, in the six years that followed, taxpayers paid Mr Fahour approximately $24 million, approved and supported by the board of Australia Post. If the board of Australia Post were not paying excessive salaries to key management positions, it would not have been necessary to sell off these national treasures to invest in people and services.

So how do Australians find themselves watching iconic public assets being sold to enrich a few private individuals at Australia Post? Anyone can see the board of Australia Post is incompetent and the government weak. The Managing Director of Australia Post was paid $5.6 million in 2016, which is excessive, to say the least, when compared to equivalent positions such as Canada Post, at A$497,000; US mail, A$543,616; and the Royal Mail in the UK, A$2.5 million. Let's put this in perspective. The board of Australia Post paid Mr Fahour more than 10 times the salary of the Prime Minister of Australia. This does not pass the pub test. After I raised concerns about Mr Fahour's pay packet on the floor of this place, he handed in his resignation the following week, because his pay had never been challenged before.

So how did the board of Australia Post arrive at $5.6 million? The mischief is that the board did not compare the role of the managing director with similar roles in Canada Post, US mail or the Royal Mail in the UK. Instead, the board instructed a consultant to look at roles in the private sector, which were entirely different to those guaranteed by government and founded on a monopoly enshrined in law.

Australia Post is owned by the government, and two shareholder ministers are tasked with acting like ordinary shareholders of any company, but they were asleep at the wheel when Australia Post went off the road. It's a tragedy and a disgrace that this government cannot manage the board of Australia Post in a way that the people of Australia expect. This government needs to learn the art of making its budget balance, and it can start with reducing the salaries of many hundreds of executives who are excessively paid with taxpayer money.

Australians are sick of seeing their hard-earned taxpayer dollars going to overpaid executives while government assets are being sold off, and I include the sale by Australia Post of the iconic GPOs in each capital city. I hear that the sales of the Brisbane and Melbourne GPOs are being negotiated, but I don't know because the government, as shareholder in Australia, keeps us all in the dark. I am sick and tired of being told about the sale of public assets after the deal is done. Australians own these assets and they want a say on whether they are sold or not. I am not going to keep fighting for the rights of Australians to be told in advance what is being done with their assets.

This week the Commonwealth Bank announced it would cut the remuneration package of its chief executive officer by 35 per cent. The board of the bank took the decision in response to shareholder concerns and wider community outrage. The lesson here is that remuneration can go down.

The government, as a matter of urgency, should be conducting a review of the salaries paid to our university vice-chancellors. This group of some 38 men and women are excessively paid. They are on average the highest-paid vice-chancellors in the world, but their universities are not the highest-performing universities in the world. Sydney university is ranked 60th in the world, but the vice-chancellor of Sydney university receives more than double the pay of the No. 1 university in the world, which is Oxford university. The Oxford university vice-chancellor is paid $577,000 a year. In Australia, the average vice-chancellor receives $890,000 a year, and all bar two are paid more than the vice-chancellor of Oxford university. This is a disgrace given many of our universities rank outside the top 300 in the world, and some are not even on the list that ends at 981. Universities cannot expect more funding from taxpayers when they overpay their vice-chancellors. That sets unrealistic relativities throughout the university.

Some senators may recall the public outrage when they learned $5.6 million had been paid to the managing director of Australia Post by the board of Australia Post. Equally outrageous is the payment of $3.6 million to the chief executive officer of the poorly performing NBN. My pressure on government forced them to issue a press release with the heading 'Remuneration Tribunal to oversee Australia Post managing director salary and conditions'. The key word here is 'oversee', because the government wants you to believe that the Remuneration Tribunal exercises some oversight over the determination of the salary for the new managing director of Australia Post. This was not the case and it could never have been the case.

Australians know that, when you say one thing but do something else, you break trust. But still the government was willing to do that and so implemented an underhanded strategy. The government pretended it was outraged at Mr Fahour's pay packet of $5.6 million. Labor also pretended to be outraged, but both parties had opportunities to deal with this excessive remuneration in past years and chose not to do anything. The government press release on 23 February 2017 was a quick and cheap way of giving the appearance of responding to the concerns of Australians, because the press release said the Remuneration Tribunal would determine the pay packet of future managing directors at Australia Post. We know the press release was misleading, because section 86 of the Australian Postal Commission Act 1989 says:

The Managing Director holds office on such terms and conditions (including terms and conditions relating to remuneration and allowances) in relation to matters not provided for by this Act as are determined by the Board.

Nevertheless, the day after the press release, the government purported to give the role to the Remuneration Tribunal, knowing full well that a letter signed by a minister cannot override an act of the parliament. The letter, a legal instrument, declared the board of the Australian Postal Commission would continue to be the employing body, and it assigned the position of managing director at Australia Post a classification E, with a minimum salary of over $469,340, with no upper limit. Let me repeat that: no upper limit. This is no accident. Classifications A, B, C and D all have upper limits. So they have given it completely back to the hands of the board of Australia Post to pay whatever they want to their CEO or managing director.

The board of Australia Post has now offered the new managing director of Australia Post a target reward of $2,337,500 and a stretch incentive of a further $412,500, making the package of $2,750,000 a year. This is half of the $5.6 million paid to Mr Fahour, but it does not reset relativities in pay at Australia Post, where seven key upper-management positions received $8,167,942 in 2016.

Despite all the government's pretence about the Remuneration Tribunal being the body to oversee and determine the quantum of the pay for the managing director of Australia Post, there is nothing to stop the pay rising back to $5.6 million or beyond in the near future. The underhanded way in which the government has gone about this whole matter simply reinforces the need for the Communications Legislation Amendment (Executive Remuneration) Bill 2017 to pass. In my bill, the right of the board of Australia Post to set remuneration will be taken out of the Australian Postal Corporation Act, and that right will by given to the Remuneration Tribunal.

The second part of my bill relates to the position of the CEO at NBN. NBN is on the government books as an asset, not a liability. It has been valued at close to $30 billion, which no-one would pay for the performance it delivers to the poor bunnies of Australia, who have been forced to take it, pay more and receive less than before. I am a member of a Senate inquiry dealing with NBN. It is heartbreaking to listen to the ordinary Australians who have made submissions to the committee. It is a disaster. Yet, despite NBN not meeting its own targets, the chief executive officer of NBN is being paid $3.6 million.

The government will not consider doing anything to reset the remuneration package at NBN because all the focus has been on Australia Post. The government is like a consumer who pays twice what they need to for designer label goods because they have no confidence in their ability to judge quality. The government needs to learn that there is not a direct correlation between how much you pay and what you get. I am determined to see excessive salaries and bonuses paid by hardworking Australian taxpayers reined in, but the government, the opposition and some crossbenchers want to fight that aim at every turn.

Australia Post and NBN are the worst cases of excess. If the Senate will not deal with the worst cases of excess, then there is no hope that a long line of other excessively paid positions will be reduced. Boards of government businesses have proven poor at negotiating remuneration packages. Just look at Australia Post and NBN. These boards do not have the skills nor the ability to stay at arm's length from what one paper describes as rolled-gold negotiators. We need the Remuneration tribunal to set the terms and conditions for all key positions in government-owned businesses. I ask senators to support this bill.