WILL THIS GREED AND CORRUPTION EVER END? Drain The Billabong! 'Time for a clean out': ASIC and Australia Post scandals rock public executives By Eryk Bagshaw October 24, 2020 Liberal and Labor MPs have condemned the corporate rewards culture and service failure at two of the government's top agencies after Australia Post and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission became mired in scandal over executive bonuses and concessions. Liberal senator Andrew Bragg has called for a "clean out at ASIC" after chairman James Shipton claimed $118,557 in taxpayer funding to cover his tax advice and deputy chair Daniel Crennan claimed $69,621 in housing expenses. Both are repaying the amounts. Mr Shipton has stood aside pending the outcome of an investigation by Treasury but maintains he has acted "properly and appropriately in this matter". Senator Bragg, who leads the government's committee on financial technology, said there were too many commissioners and not enough follow-through on enforcement. "Too many behinds and no goals," he wrote on Twitter. ASIC has six commissioners including its chairs. The regulator was criticised by the banking royal commission for failing to prosecute the big banks in the lead-up to the inquiry and pledged to overhaul its approach to favour litigation. The government is now also drawing up terms of reference for an investigation into Australia Post after Senate estimates heard on Thursday that its chief executive Christine Holgate spent $19,950 on Cartier watches as rewards for four employees. Ms Holgate had previously spent $300,000 on corporate credit cards and chauffeur-driven cars in the 2019/20 financial year. Government sources, who asked not to be identified because deliberations are ongoing, said the inquiry would look at the culture of Australia Post that allowed the incidents to occur, opening up a wide-ranging brief into Ms Holgate's tenure at the agency. The former Blackmores chief executive has stood aside pending the outcome of the investigation. Liberal MP Andrew Laming, the chair of the standing committee on employment, said uniform salary structures for government-owned corporations and statutory authorities needed to be implemented. Australia Post and ASIC, despite being public entities, are run independently of government and not subject to the same executive pay scales that govern the rest of the public service. "The argument has always been, to attract people out of the private sector the salary has to be high," he told the ABC on Saturday. "That's a very flawed argument. "There has to be a solution and that is if you want to pay more than a High Court judge to anyone working in the public service, you go to the remuneration tribunal and the whole discussion is public and the public can either support or oppose it." The chief justice of the High Court earns $596,220 a year. Ms Holgate earns a base salary of $1.4 million a year before bonuses. Mr Shipton earns $775,900 a year. Labor's spokesman for cities Andrew Giles said all "Australians should be shocked by this". "These are people who are personally selected by the government for these critical corporate enforcement roles, and yet we're seeing - I mean staggered by this, $118,000 spent on tax advice by the taxpayer for Mr Shipton," he said. "This is absolutely extraordinary." The developments follow years of government initiatives to attract talent from the private sector to diversify the public sector workforce, while also sending high-ranking public servants back into corporations on secondment. In 2017 The Public Service Commission program secured placements for 20 of the country's highest public servants in state and federal governments across companies such as Virgin, Deloitte and Qantas. Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday rejected claims by Collingwood president Eddie Maguire, who sits on the football club's board with Ms Holgate, that the pursuit of the Australia Post chief was motivated by the "politics of envy" that made "superstar business people play like dullards". Scott Morrison has put embattled Australia Post boss Christine Holgate on notice. Mr Morrison said the evidence given by Ms Holgate would not have passed "any test with the Australian public". "I think there wouldn't be a board member of a government agency or a CEO of a government agency that didn't get my message yesterday," he said. "I think they got it with a rocket." https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/federal/time-for-a-clean-out-asic-and-australia-post-scandals-rock-public-executives-20201024-p5687g.html