adam's blog
CEO remuneration "a response to market demands"??
Greig Gailey, president of the Business Council of Australia this morning on the ABC’s AM:
PETER RYAN: What about executives in the corporate world, especially those on multi-million dollar packages at the big end of town that you represent. Do they also need to show restraint and consider taking a pay freeze?
GREIG GAILEY: Well that’s a separate issue and I’m not going to take a position on that. But what we’re seeing there is, I guess, a response to market demands which is about shortages in the economy.
Is he seriously arguing that when the average CEO salary of a top 100 Australian company is four million dollars, that’s a simple case of supply and demand? No matter how good they are, I’m quite sure no CEO is worth anywhere near some of the ridiculous salaries they are paid. If this is the result of the market setting the prices, sounds like a case of market failure to me.
Coalition out to $3.70, Labor favourites at $1.28 (!)
With reference to arleeshar’s post from May…
Woah…
Remember to keep checking the excellent Oz Politics for more.
Sack Kevin Andrews
What happened to the presumption of innocence until proved guilty, let alone judicial independence? I sincerely hope there is more evidence in this case than has been made public. Apparently, if the government don’t like ya, the government can lock ya up indefinitely in Australia these days, regardless of what a court has decided. Unrelated, you say? Amazing coincidence, just four hours after the court’s bail decision. Can anyone seriously defend this turn of events as just and fair?
Minister Andrews reckons he’s just “exercising his duties under the Migration Act”, but he should not be surprised when the nation exercises its duties at the ballot box in a few short months time.
Those poor Swans
Losing by one point in the grand final is pretty bad, but I didn’t realise it had come to this…
There’s always next year, that’s what’s coming up!
At least the SMH’s Radar section, in the form of Dom from the Chaser, has an antidote for everyone’s undefined direction after the loss… laughter!
Boot camp - No April fool's joke
Hard to believe, but apparently true:
More and more people are buying and loving Macs. To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac. Called Boot Camp (for now), you can download a public beta today.
It’s been looming for a while now, and may have been given impetus after non-official instructions for getting XP running on Intel based macs were published around two weeks ago. For a company that prides itself, nay, bases it’s business model around producing better software and operating systems though, it strikes me as very strange thing to be endorsing. Sure, let the hackers run Windows on Mac hardware if they’re game, but why the need for an official installer?
Of course, there is speculation that this is the beginning of the end for Apple OS X, which really isn’t all that far fetched. If you think about OS technology that was around, say, 10 years ago and think about where we might be in 10 years from now, I too am willing to bet Apple OS may have just begun digging it’s own grave…
Daylight saving time
I was in the local supermarket recently and happened to overhear two shelf packers discussing the return to eastern standard time from daylight saving time. After agreeing that the clocks indeed would be wound BACK an hour, there was still some doubt in their minds…
So, just say it’s 7 o’clock tomorrow, is that like 6 o’clock or 8 o’clock?
You’d think people would be used to the transition by now! But to some extent, I understand the confusion, particularly after someone thought it would be a great idea to delay the transition by a week because of the local sporting carnival. Pretty much all computers these days have logic to deal with the automatic adjustment of daylight saving time, but of course, anomalies such as these really tend to throw a spanner in the works. And this is just one little occurrence for a single date change for Australia - I’m sure heaps of other countries out there similarly think nothing of shifting established timezone patterns willy nilly, causing all sorts of headaches for geeks worldwide all the time. For shame. (end rant).
Finally some good news
I think a two party preferred poll result of 58 percent for Labor pretty much speaks for itself. The Australian’s Newspoll puts the TPP figure at 54 percent, and makes the obvious link that it is due to “Labor’s IR blitz” paying off. Peter Harcher also has his say, highlighting the narrowing of the gap between Howard and Beazley’s approval ratings.
Mark Metherell at The Herald reckons the Telstra sale also had a lot to do with the poll result:
Sixty-eight per cent oppose selling the Government’s remaining stake in Telstra, up four points on August. Even most Coalition supporters, 54 per cent, now oppose the sale - a 10 percentage point jump in three months.
But maybe it’s not just a single issue, perhaps there’s a growing feeling that people are getting the raw end of the stick and little to no accountability from government now that the death star is fully operational. Things like rushing through legislation with only a one week review and gagging debate in the lower house tend to give the impression that the Howard government doesn’t care about good governance, only about getting its own way.
The poll results are certainly good news, but there’s only one poll that really matters. Let’s hope the momentum continues until then.
Australian Idle
It’s coming down to that time of year. TV shows are ending, networks wring all the goodness out of the season finales, and yes, the third Australian Idol series winds up to the screams and applause of an army of 13 year old girls.
Amusingly, previous Idol judge Ian “Dicko” Dickinson has had his say on the current crop of champions, the verdict being that they come up a little short…
"David who?" says Howard
In response to Danna Vale’s call for the release of David Hicks, John Howard has pretty much answered with a flat out ‘no’.
Hicks is facing a questionably constituted US military court on charges of conspiracy to commit war crimes, attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent and aiding the enemy. What’s incredible is that Howard freely admits that he wants to see David Hicks tried by a foreign court for these charges – crimes he could not be charged with here:
“If David Hicks was brought back to Australia, he would go free. He could not be charged under Australian law and it is not our intention to do that.”
No, it’s not like he’s an Australian citizen with the right to presumption of innocence or anything…
Associating with terrorists
NivCorp tells a disturbing story:
A good friend of mine visits Villawood detention center regularly - and speaks with the prisoners there. The other day, some Department of Immigration thugs visited her place, and asked her mother about her activities - why she went to Villawood, etc etc. Apparently she was the last person to see a detainee before he escaped. […]