Public sector staff bonanzas

Many taxpayers, especially those fed up with “snail mail” that increasingly lived up to its nickname, would agree with Scott Morrison that four Australia Post staff receiving Cartier watches worth $20,000 in total as a reward in 2018 was “disgraceful” and “not on”. Australia Post’s former chief executive, Christine Holgate, resigned on Monday following the revelation, which emerged at a Senate committee hearing. The issue was always complex, however. And it has become much more so in light of Adam Creighton’s revelation that four of the federal government’s largest regulators and statutory authorities paid bonuses worth $13.2m last year to 1700 executives and other senior staff members. Those bodies were the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, the Australian Securities & Investments Commission and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.

On Monday, Nick Tabakoff reported that three ABC staff members earning between $370,000 and $395,000 a year pocketed average bonuses of $18,133 each — almost enough to buy four of the controversial Cartier watches. Senior ABC staff members in other pay grades received bonuses ranging from an average of $5333 to $8750 each.

Bonuses are widely incorporated in salary packages in the private sector, especially in professional services firms — depending on outcomes — and in companies in which the bottom line depends on sales performance. Some experienced leaders in government bodies, however, doubt that bonuses are appropriate in the public sector.

Government agencies, especially those in highly skilled roles who could command top dollars in industry, should be well paid. Allan Fels, who was chairman of the ACCC for eight years to 2003, told Creighton that bonuses were rarely appropriate in the public sector, where it was “very hard to evaluate performance”. A former head of one of the four regulatory agencies paying generous bonuses said the problem was that bonuses had become “almost the expectation”. That defeats their purpose entirely. As the former executive said, bonuses should be paid only for performance that is “super beyond expectations”. How that should be determined, however, is not clear.

At a time of low wage rises, many taxpayers with busy jobs are finding themselves working harder than before, for the same salary, without bonuses. They will be annoyed to learn they footed the bill for corporate regulator ASIC, for example, to pay 1355 workers, or 70 per cent of its staff, average bonuses of $7130 last year.

For the Morrison government, the issue is one of consistency after it took such a strong stand against the watches given by Ms Holgate to the four staff members in what became a corporate entity in 1989, albeit government-owned. The cash bonuses handed out in other government entities also will rankle, both with the public and those they elect. In the post-COVID recovery phase, when demands on the public purse have never been greater and government debt is rising, accountability for remuneration across the public sector — including the ABC — is fundamental. Taxpayers deserve value for money.

The matter of bonuses needs to be examined across government agencies, and consistent, transparent standards set out and followed.