Big salaries back at the big end of town

As bizoids descend on Canberra to talk productivity, living standards and artificial intelligence, CBD thought it was wise to see how the 1 per cent are travelling.

Commonwealth Bank boss Matt Comyn is one of 23 guests at the government’s economic reform roundtable, and, sadly for him, his company is short a couple of bil. The boss of Australia’s biggest business by market capitalisation pocketed $7 million in the year to June, compared with almost $9 million in the year prior.

While Comyn’s fixed pay and cash bonus increased, he received less from deferred awards that vested during the year. Better that than being replaced by AI chatbots, as happened to dozens of CommBank call centre staff recently.

At the Big Australian, big salaries are also par for the course – even as profits and dividends fall. BHP chief executive Mike Henry trousered a 16 per cent annual pay rise to $US8.5 million ($13.11 million). His colleagues Brandon Craig and Vandita Pant have also dug up healthy pay rises, netting $US3.15 million and $US4.24 million, respectively.

All this as BHP looks at closing mines and its profits fall sharply to the lowest number since 2020. In explaining the increase to investors, the company said the market was very competitive for top talent and that the committee setting remuneration was “satisfied the outcomes are fair and reflect the shareholder experience during the period”.

Speaking of jobs, Comyn’s predecessor Ian Narev is ensconced at job search business Seek. He’s sitting on an 8.1 per cent annual pay rise to $5.4 million.

Canavan’s energetic table

Not everyone is getting into the roundtable spirit. Nationals senator Matt Canavan sat himself at a table across from Parliament House with a sign that screamed: “ENERGY PRICES ARE THE REAL PRODUCTIVITY ISSUE! CHANGE MY MIND”.

Canavan’s stunt attracted the attention of Sky News and the Guardian on Tuesday, proving a little colour can go a long way on a slow news day. Canavan will this week host a rival event inside the great house, promising economists, former Treasury officials and former business group representatives.

Then there’s former Reserve Bank governor and Macquarie Group chairman Glenn Stevens, who has blamed Australia’s poor productivity on weakness in the mining sector. “What’s happened is that mining productivity has been going down,” he told an investor conference in June. Who will tell Gina Rinehart?

Stevens also reckons Australia’s had a list for improving productivity for about a decade, but politicians have done not much about it. “More competition, less regulation, more flexibility, including in IR things,” he says. “These are things that are not politically easy to do.”

More Al Muderis spin news

CBD brought word last week that disgraced orthopaedic surgeon Munjed Al Muderis had spent $19,000 on just nine days of crisis communications advice from PR veteran Peter Wilkinson after an investigation by this masthead and 60 Minutes found (among other things) that he’d left patients with maggot-infested wounds.

As we reported, Al Muderis ignored Wilkinson’s advice, which was to prioritise a media, over legal, strategy, called in the defamation big gun Sue Chrysanthou, SC, and proceeded to lose an epic trial against The Age, 60 Minutes and the Herald, leaving the doctor on the hook for some $19 million in legal bills.

It turns out another PR firm worked for Al Muderis, before abruptly parting ways. CBD hears that Mark Hawthorne, a former senior editor at The Age and managing partner of pricey PR firm The Civic Partnership, worked with Al Muderis for a few months during the first stages of Al Muderis’ trial in 2023.

You might recall Civic’s work representing Israel Folau during his clash with Rugby Australia. Word on the street is the firm’s top managing partners charge up to $7000 a day.

But Civic stopped taking calls from journalists about the case in October 2023, as the trial gathered pace. Asked for comment, Hawthorne responded: “At Civic, we do not discuss client matters.”

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