Snowy Hydro faces probe over $30m staff bonus payments

Snowy Hydro paid nearly $30m in staff bonuses during the 2022 financial year, triggering Labor to ask the Remuneration Tribunal to review pay at the company.

Snowy Hydro is building a giant $5.9bn expansion project dubbed Snowy 2.0 but faces cost and deadline pressures.

Snowy Hydro paid nearly $30m in staff bonuses during the 2022 financial year, triggering Labor to ask the Remuneration Tribunal to review pay at the company.

Data tabled to a Senate committee showed the government-owned group paid $29.6m in short-term incentives across 1446 employees in the last financial year, with an average payment of $20,492 per staff member. That compared to $24.9m or $17,100 for 1457 staff members in the 2021 financial year. Snowy said none of the payments were made for its long-term incentive program in the last two years as the performance targets had not been met.

“Snowy Hydro has significantly reduced the maximum incentive under the long-term incentive scheme and increased the fixed annual remuneration and short term incentive opportunity,” Snowy said in response to a question from Greens senator Janet Rice on November 8.

“The overall effect is to reduce the maximum potential reward from variable pay components and increase the percentage of total remuneration paid as fixed annual remuneration.”

Paul Broad, who quit as Snowy Hydro chief executive in August, boosted his pay by more than $500,000 in 2021-22.

The Remuneration Tribunal, which handles the pay of commonwealth offices, will consider remuneration at Snowy as part of a review, sources said. Snowy chief executive Paul Broad quit in August following revelations of the cost crunch and tensions with Energy Minister Chris Bowen over green hydrogen at the company’s proposed NSW Hunter gas plant.

Mr Broad boosted his pay by more than $500,000 to $2.77m in the 2021-22 financial year after being granted a short-term bonus boost, compared with his $2.24m pay packet in the previous year.

Snowy’s annual underlying profit after tax fell by 30 per cent to $189m from $271m in 2021, with the company blaming an extreme winter that featured price caps and the suspension of the electricity market.

The abrupt departure of Mr Broad led to speculation he had been dumped from his role after he expressed doubts over Labor’s pledge to convert the Hunter gas plant to a 100 per cent green-hydrogen generator by the end of the decade. Labor in January backflipped on opposition to the Kurri Kurri gas plant but promised to convert the facility to a green hydrogen generator by the end of the decade. It committed a further $700m to ensure it is fully powered by green hydrogen “as soon as possible”, potentially by 2030.

However, the $700m had not been allocated in the October budget and Snowy said it was still working out a “business case” for the cost, due early 2023.

Originally published as Snowy Hydro faces probe over $30m staff bonus payments