Terry McCrann: Scott Morrison’s attack on Christine Holgate was hysteria on steroids
Scott Morrison’s attack on Australia Post’s chief executive Christine Holgate was not only hysteria on steroids, he also announced he is so disconnected that he does not understand how businesses work, writes Terry McCrann.
Terry McCrann
Don't miss out on the headlines from Terry McCrann. Followed categories will be added to My News.
I am appalled and shocked that a Prime Minister could be so utterly stupid and so utterly spineless at the same time.
Scott Morrison’s savage attack on Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate over the four $3000 watches and his demand she stand aside while this terrible crime be investigated as a matter of urgency was hysteria on steroids.
We have a PM announcing that he is so dense and disconnected that he does not understand how businesses work — with things called “incentives” and “rewards” — and that AusPost is exactly such a business.
Indeed, he’s supposed to want it to be so. Or does he prefer handing out more billions in taxpayer subsidies to ensure it doesn’t ever again commit such dreadful acts as handing out what were effectively a handful of $3000 bonuses?
We have a PM also announcing that he is so spineless that he caves in fear of the Opposition seizing on the word “Cartier” as a synonym for extravagance and waste of public money.
In 2018 four AusPost executives each received a $3000 Cartier watch — would it have been utterly unexceptional if they’d been Seiko or Samsung? — in recognition of their clinching of a hugely significant deal for AusPost with three of the four big banks, which would allow people to access banking services at and via AusPost.
This is seminal for AusPost as a — gee, what’s that word again, PM? — digital operating business. It’s also pretty significant in broader terms of making financial services work cheaper and better, delivering better services and cost savings to millions of Australian.
In recognition of the good work they had done — and the very clear and significant benefits it would deliver to AusPost, and on to taxpayers as owners of AusPost — the relatively new CEO Holgate authorised the watches as a “thankyou”.
Holgate told Senate Estimates that it was a recommendation of the chairman (at the time, John Stanhope) that the four be rewarded. She authorised the watches on behalf of the board.
That’s it. Utterly unexceptional — what was effectively a $3000 bonus, just $12,000 for the executive team, for doing the hard yards and wrapping up a company-making deal, obviously of great benefit to AusPost.
It is the sort of thing CEOs and boards do all the time, PM?
Although if I’d been one of the four I might have preferred something other than an overpriced “branded” watch.
Now Holgate didn’t say, but as I noted, she’d been CEO for less than a year. She might well have wanted to send a signal, across the business, that exceptional work would be recognised and rewarded.
Obviously the PM hasn’t a clue: that you might sensibly spend $12,000 to send a signal that will deliver much more in payback. That’s what these weird things called “incentives” aim at.
The $12,000 will certainly deliver greater benefit to the taxpayer than the far bigger sum of taxpayer money that the PM is now going to waste on his utterly stupid and pointless inquiry.
The sort of hysterical nonsense that Holgate was subjected to was shown by Labor Senator Kimberley Kitching, who demanded Holgate declare that it was appropriate to use taxpayer money to buy Cartier watches.
Apparently Kitching doesn’t understand that all payments to AusPost staff “use taxpayer money”, as she put it. What? Did she think, there’s a big sugar daddy that funds the payments?
And why on earth — indeed, on any planet in the known universe — is it necessary for Holgate to “stand down” while Morrison’s ludicrous inquiry goes on?
What does he think she is going to do? Hide the watches? Menace the “investigators”?
And what on earth is this inquiry going to uncover? That, well, four $3000 watches were awarded, on the CEO’s authorisation, under board approval?
And what will it recommend? That only $2000 watches can be awarded in future? Or maybe $200 ones? And “gold watches” for long service will be utterly verboten — can’t use “taxpayer money” to buy those?
The (relatively new) chairman of AusPost Lucio D Bartolomeo should have told the PM to buzz off. If he wants to make an utter fool of himself, so be it, but he is not going to drag AusPost into the insanity; and that under no circumstances — no circumstances — would he agree to Holgate standing down.
Indeed, the whole board should tell Morrison to take a Bex and have a good lie down or else they will all resign together.
Originally published as Terry McCrann: Scott Morrison’s attack on Christine Holgate was hysteria on steroids