Has Telstra crossed that 'bad taste' threshold?

Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo has recently had his salary package increased by $1.6million to $13.39million.

This works out at around $114,000 for every percentage point increase in company annual net profit for the 2007-08 fiscal year.

Now Telstra is not really doing as well as it has in the past, so why is it heaping enormous cash bonuses and incentives, shares and options to buy on senior executives?

More importantly - why is its principal shareholder, the Commonwealth, not putting a brake on these huge payouts?

Stephen Mayne predicts; It now increasingly looks like Sol could yet reach gross payments and share profits of $100 million from his 5 year transformation story.

I don't care how business savvy a CEO is; no-one could possibly 'earn' or deserve that sort of money.

The Telstra board wins the 2008 Bad Taste Business Award as far as I'm concerned.

Graph displayed at The Wall Street Journal.

Placing all our woes into a broader perspective

2008 August 13

NGC 6888: The Crescent Nebula Credit & Copyright: Tony Hallas

Found at NASA

Explanation: NGC 6888, also known as the Crescent Nebula, is a cosmic bubble about 25 light-years across, blown by winds from its central, bright, massive star. This beautiful telescopic view combines a composite color image with narrow band data that isolates light from hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the wind-blown nebula. The oxygen atoms produce the blue-green hue that seems to enshroud the detailed folds and filaments. NGC 6888's central star is classified as a Wolf-Rayet star (WR 136). The star is shedding its outer envelope in a strong stellar wind, ejecting the equivalent of the Sun's mass every 10,000 years. The nebula's complex structures are likely the result of this strong wind interacting with material ejected in an earlier phase. Burning fuel at a prodigious rate and near the end of its stellar life this star should ultimately go out with a bang in a spectacular supernova explosion. Found in the nebula rich constellation Cygnus, NGC 6888 is about 5,000 light-years away.

Click image to enlarge.

Meanwhile just over the border

Queensland's new conservative bandaid on the waning fortunes of the Liberal and Nationals parties is in a spot of bother.
Some wag has hopped in smartly and set up a spoof Liberal-National Party of Queensland discussion forum website at liberalnationalparty.org.
One of the discussion contributors is Joh Bjelke-Petersen, who joined the site this month.
It seems in the rush to amalgamate someone forgot to register internet addresses with all the permutations of the party's new name.
Likely to give the party faithful a heart attack are sentiments such as these; "All drugs should be legalised in my opinion. Drug use should be treated in the same way as alcohol and nicoteine which are both deadly drugs sold on shopping shelves and taxed to the hilt by every government."

Well done, fellas - it's good to see Coalition pollies getting the respect that they deserve.

Crib sheet: NSW North Coast local government elections, 13 September 2008

A 2008 council crib sheet for local voters

Ballina Shire Council - 3 ward system and popular election of mayor
17 candidates for election as councillors
5 of these candidates standing for mayor
9 councillor positions available
Population est. 39,000
Link to NSWEC web page here

Byron Shire Council - no ward system and popular election of mayor
3 parties registered
36 candidates for election as councillors
7 of these candidates standing for mayor
10 councillor positions available
Population est. 29,000
Link to NSWEC web page here

Clarence Valley Shire Council - no ward system and mayor elected by councillors
21 candidates for election as councillors
9 councillor positions available
Population est. 50,000
Link to NSWEC web page here

Coffs Harbour City Council - no ward system and popular election of mayor
2 parties registered
38 candidates for election as councillors
5 of these candidates standing for mayor
9 councillor positions available
Population est. 65,000
Link to NSWEC web page here

Kyogle Council - 3 ward system and mayor elected by councillors
18 candidates for election as councillors
11 councillor positions available
Population est. 9,300
Link to NSWEC web page here

Lismore City Council - no ward system and popular election of mayor
4 parties registered
51 candidates for election as councillors
9 of these candidates standing for mayor
12 councillor positions available
Population est. 42,300
Link to NSWEC web page here

Richmond Valley Council - no ward system and popular election of mayor
24 candidates for election as councillors
4 of these candidates standing for mayor
9 councillor positions available
Population est. 25,000
Link to NSWEC web page here

Tweed Shire Council -no ward system and mayor elected by councillors
2 parties registered
39 candidates for election as councillors

Under administration since 2005, before which there were 11 councillor

positions available

Population est. 81,000
Link to NSWEC web page here

Monsanto marches on and on....

Click on map to enlarge

The GeneEthics network has just published a map of Victorian sites where 2008 winter crops of genetically modified canola are growing.

This has caused some consternation amongst farming groups who are alternatively asserting this is an invasion of privacy, discrimination, attempted bullying and not in the public interest.

I don't know which assertion I find funnier. However, it is clear that GeneEthics has hit hard on a business nerve.

I only wish there was a NSW map, as I shop with an eye to avoiding produce and products which may contain GMO ingredients.

Still, now I know to avoid quite a few canola-based groceries coming out of Victoria.

Before anyone gets too excited about the Lyne and Mayo by-elections

So far it's been a little quiet on the Lyne (NSW) and Mayo (SA) fronts, which are tootling towards their respective federal by-elections without much comment.

Still that's bound to change once the election campaigns get started, though just how excited the rest of the country should get about the votes of a grand total of 185,534 people if they all bother to turn up at the polling booths on the 6th September 2008.

Just 10 months past the 2007 federal election, I for one am not particularly interested as I presume the status quo will prevail.

However, last week Poll Bludger mustered some enthusiasm.

"The September 6 by-elections for Mayo and Lyne initially loomed as fizzers, with Labor showing no inclination post-Gippsland to test the waters in unwinnable seats. They have instead respectively emerged as mildly and enormously interesting, thanks to the entry of non-major party players. In Mayo, housing tycoon Bob Day will bring a cashed-up campaign to bear against the Liberals as the candidate of Family First, having failed to win Liberal preselection for Mayo after unsuccessfully contesting Makin last year. Day would nonetheless have to be considered a long shot against Liberal candidate Jamie Briggs, but it’s a very different story in Lyne where independent state MP Rob Oakeshott has been rated the “clear favourite” by Antony Green. Imre Salusinszky of The Australian reports that Nationals polling puts his approval rating in the electorate at over 70 per cent, and says the party is concerned Labor will “direct resources to Mr Oakeshott’s campaign”."

Malcolm Turnbull overstates the case re the former Howard Government's attitude to pensioners

It's a sad fact of life that when politicians speak of pensioners they automatically refer to only one section of the community - older people who have retired.
They know there are other types of pensioners, but they usually choose to ignore them as inconvenient little distractions.

So when the Liberals Malcolm Turnbull said last Monday; "We've been standing up and fighting for pensioners and retirees in opposition as we did in government," he definitely didn't mean those on a Disability Support Pension.
The former Howard Government was remarkable for treating disability pensioners like lepers and repeatedly denying them the Utilities Allowance and the one-off cash bonuses given out in the wake of federal budgets from 2006.

Sadly, Kevin Rudd was also none too keen on giving disability pensioners the one-off bonus, but at least he and Cabinet did extend the utility allowance to include this group.

It will be interesting to watch how the Rudd Government tries to cut disability pensioners out of the full measure of whatever increase in pensions or allowances is finally recommended by the Pension Review committee in February 2009.

It's almost bound to happen this way, because the group is not that large when compared with retirees, isn't a forceful lobby and contains some of the most vulnerable and socially isolated individuals in our society, those with a psychiatric disability.

This strange form of political myopia and unthinking discrimination reflects less on these pensioners and more on how our politicians see Australian society through a prism of their own self-satisfaction.

Right now Prime Minister Rudd and Community Services Minister Macklin are not covering themselves with glory by urging a go slow on implementing any interim change to pensions generally while waiting for the final Pension Review report.

In the meantime, many of those in the Northern Rivers on Disability Support Pensions struggle to meet the costs of basic food, shelter, clothing, transport and medical care in a regional area which has few viable support systems available to them.

"A discussion paper prepared by Jeff Harmer, head of the Families Department, and released yesterday, shows the singles rate of only 60% of the combined couple rate is lower than the 62.9% average for the major Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. The Australian proportion is behind Belgium, the US, Britain, New Zealand, Austria, Canada and Ireland."

Full August 2008 Pension Review Background Paper