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

And the government, that they will be better skilled than Australians. I do not accept that. I do not believe it and, as I said in the second reading speech, I think there is a humanity involved in the payment in the qualities that you look for in a CEO. There is some parallel here in the endless argument about how well or otherwise members of parlia­ment are paid and there can be no justification—and I have heard none in this debate and will hear none—for packages as big as $16 million in one year being taken, raked off by CEOs of big banks in this country, while, as I said, there is a regressive tax at ATM level on the poorest people in Australia, put on by the banks and illegal if it were in the United Kingdom, but done here in Australia and raising enormous amounts of money. It is not enough to pay for those CEO packages, you would not think, but contributes to them at the expense of people who are having a real struggle—good Australians, people who have worked all their lives for this country and for these corporations, who find themselves in struggle street while bank managers and mining corporation managers take home packages way in excess of $10 million, and headed even higher in a country where the principle of a fair go and a reasonable relationship between CEOs packages and those of ordinary workers has been lost and needs to be regained. I commend this amendment to the bill to the chamber.