The debate about executive salaries means the rules of the game in the current financial climate have changed, said Senator Barnaby Joyce. In the US, President Obama has capped executive salaries that receive federal bailout money at $500,000. In Australia, as Senator Joyce said in a speech to the Senate in October 2008, executives should be fully aware that if they are receiving a financial product underwritten by the Australian taxpayer, then they must be very considerate about exactly what their own personal drawings should be.

“What is particular galling about Pacific Brands is that they have used taxpayer funds to upgrade their machinery and this has been thrown back in our face as they prepare to package that equipment up and send it to China, with the added insult that the executives gave themselves a wage rise on the way through,” Senator Joyce said.

“So much for Mr Rudd’s stimulus package, I suppose we call this a socks and jocks shock. It shows how ridiculous Labor’s profane waste of money has been in these stimulus packages. With Pacific Brands it seems that the decision spells quite clearly ‘We love your stimulus package and it will be far more stimulating for us when we can manufacture the products in China’.

“Those who are a benefactor of public funds should have the extent of their personal drawing if not tempered by their own self then made a condition by government when those funds are advanced.  

“This applies to Pacific Brands or sections of the medical profession who take far too much liberty in the payments they demand that are underwritten by the publicly funded cost safety net Medicare for treatments administered in a publicly funded hospital from knowledge acquired from a publicly funded tertiary education or those commercial lobby groups who appeal for a stimulus package to underwrite their figures in very short-term highly expensive and currently implausible financial packages.

“If a major source of the underwriting of your income stream is from a taxpayer or borrowed funds that the taxpayer will have to repay then there is a moral obligation to temper what you demand so as to clearly delineate between what is a good wicket and what is excessive. If it is publicly deemed that what you demand is excessive then do not be surprised when the public demand that the excessiveness be curtailed.

Senator Joyce said he has no problem if someone says they have never requested public funds and they make their money from the free marketplace by their own endeavours and efforts and then they gain what they will as long as it is not by reason of a monopoly or market-centralised position. But when the Australian taxpayer has underwritten their commercial existence then the rules of the game should quite obviously change.

“It includes but goes beyond just the desire that is being exhibited that shareholders should give clearance to executive salaries. The government should make implicit to anyone who has made a substantial call in their private commercial endeavours on the public taxpayers' funds that there is a limit to the tolerance in what they take home to their own family at the expense of others.”