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Telstra CEO receives $700k pay rise even after 20% bonus cut over nationwide outage
Luca Ittimani
Telstra has paid its chief executive, Vicki Brady, $6.8m for the year ending in June, after docking 20% of her bonus in response to the network’s nationwide outage last month.
The company reported financial results today and said its board decided to cut Brady’s bonus by $607,000 when it met on Monday. Brady took home $6.1m the year before, so she still got a $700,000 pay rise.
The company has faced heavy political criticism for its handling of the outage, which it has blamed on the lack of a software update on a key time-keeping system.
Telstra also docked 20% of the bonus for its former networks group executive and 10% of all other senior executives, the equivalent of $1.3m unpaid. The company’s results show senior executives were paid $20.7m combined for the year.
The company reported its profits rose to $2.4bn, from $2.3bn the prior year. It paid shareholders a dividend of 21 cents per share over the year.
The strong result was helped by job cuts, with employee numbers falling 1,219 to total 29,334 by June. It was also helped by steep price rises: income from mobile phones rose $300m, with customers paying an extra 7.2% on prepaid handheld plans and an extra 3.4% on postpaid handheld plans. Despite the rising prices, Telstra sold 1m more mobile plans, and now has 26m services in operation.
Key events
‘A terrific speech’ Canavan supports Bragg but warns, don’t touch backpacker visas
Nationals leader Matt Canavan says he doesn’t want to see working holiday visas touched in the effort to reduce migration numbers.
But he’s playing nice and still says his colleague Andrew Bragg gave a “terrific speech” to the national press club yesterday.
Bragg said that net overseas migration numbers should be dropped to 180,000 a year (in the 2024-25 financial year the NOM was 306,000, and is predicted to drop to around 260,000 in the 2025-26 financial year). He said the way to get there is to drop international students, working holiday makers and family visas.
Canavan told a press conference a little earlier:
Look, I thought Andrew gave a terrific speech. He’s doing excellent work on exposing the deficiencies in the government’s housing agenda, the almost complete lack of homes that are being built.
All Andrew said was that we’ll look at all these things to bring migration numbers down. Now, I will say, though, that as leader of the Nationals Party, we will not be changing, we’ll not be seeking changes to working holiday visa makers, because that’s not the reason why we’ve had the surge in migration.
Patrick Commins
Mortgage repayment burden back near peak: RBA
Australia’s mortgage repayment burden is back near its 2024 peak, as Chris Kent, an assistant governor at the Reserve Bank, said the housing market downturn reduced the need for further rate hikes.
Kent, who is in charge of financial markets at the RBA, said the budget’s tax reforms “appear to have contributed to reduced demand in the established housing market by lowering the after-tax return from housing for investors”.
“While it is hard to be precise, the housing market appears to have softened by somewhat more than the recent increase in interest rates would imply”.
Kent said even in Sydney and Melbourne where property prices falls have been most acute, prices are only “back to where they were only a short while ago”.
A couple of days after the RBA board held the cash rate at 4.35%, Kent outlined how this year’s three interest rate hikes were having their intended effect on slowing the economy.
Scheduled mortgage payments have risen and are now close to their 2024 peak as a share of household disposable income.
But he also noted that AI-related spending here (most notably on data centres) and abroad were working against the bank’s efforts to slow inflation.
By itself, this AI activity means that policy rates need to be higher than otherwise, at least in the short run.
Acoss denies Bragg’s claims they want a 30% super guarantee
The Australian council of social services (Acoss) has rebuffed Andrew Bragg’s claims this morning that they want a 30% super guarantee.
Bragg made the comments to RN Breakfast this morning, which you can read here.
The group’s position, in fact, from 2020 was that any superannuation increases above 10% needed to be based on evidence that they would benefit people on low incomes across their lifetime.
The current superannuation rate is 12%.
In a submission to the government’s retirements incomes review in 2020, Acoss stipulated that increases to super above 10% should ensure low income workers are “not forced to save too much for retirement when they face financial challenges in working life”.
Bragg’s views ‘personal’ not official policy says Taylor
Angus Taylor has not endorsed Andrew Bragg’s net overseas migration target of 180,000, and says the shadow housing minister’s speech yesterday was based on his “personal views”.
It’s a rebuke of the speech that has ruffled some feathers internally across the Coalition.
Taylor doesn’t want to put a figure on what the Coalition wants net migration to be, but says it would be capped to new housing builds.
Andrew expressed some of his personal views yesterday. I’ve made clear to him that his job is to express … the views of the Coalition and the senior team of which he is a member when it comes to immigration policy.
Net overseas migration will depend on housing supply. It will be capped.
Taylor avoids questions on whether he spoke to McInerney about providing money to reformers
Angus Taylor has refused to answer questions on whether he spoke to Dallas McInerney about providing thousands of dollars to the reformers group.
Evidence aired in an Icac hearing showed text messages referencing Taylor had agreed to pay a $15,000 “injection” and a $3000 monthly donation to the right-wing group.
Taylor told a press conference this morning he had already answered questions about the money. He’s previously said “no payment was made”.
There’s some back and forth between him and the journalist, who says they’re asking a specific question about whether Taylor spoke to McInerney about this money.
Taylor keeps repeating, “I have said all along I’m not going to give a running commentary.”
No payment was made. I was clear about that. You get to ask the questions I get to answer them and I’ve answered the question. Happy to take other questions.
Telstra CEO receives $700k pay rise even after 20% bonus cut over nationwide outage
Luca Ittimani
Telstra has paid its chief executive, Vicki Brady, $6.8m for the year ending in June, after docking 20% of her bonus in response to the network’s nationwide outage last month.
The company reported financial results today and said its board decided to cut Brady’s bonus by $607,000 when it met on Monday. Brady took home $6.1m the year before, so she still got a $700,000 pay rise.
The company has faced heavy political criticism for its handling of the outage, which it has blamed on the lack of a software update on a key time-keeping system.
Telstra also docked 20% of the bonus for its former networks group executive and 10% of all other senior executives, the equivalent of $1.3m unpaid. The company’s results show senior executives were paid $20.7m combined for the year.
The company reported its profits rose to $2.4bn, from $2.3bn the prior year. It paid shareholders a dividend of 21 cents per share over the year.
The strong result was helped by job cuts, with employee numbers falling 1,219 to total 29,334 by June. It was also helped by steep price rises: income from mobile phones rose $300m, with customers paying an extra 7.2% on prepaid handheld plans and an extra 3.4% on postpaid handheld plans. Despite the rising prices, Telstra sold 1m more mobile plans, and now has 26m services in operation.
Penry Buckley
Catholic Schools NSW CEO to appear before Icac
The Catholic Schools NSW CEO, Dallas McInerney, will appear before the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac) when it resumes its hearings at 10am this morning.
As part of its investigation into alleged corruption in the NSW Liberal party, Icac is investigating whether illegal donations were made by the governing body for 600 schools in the state, arranged and approved by McInerney, to support the alleged branch stacking efforts of conservative Christian group the Reformers.
The inquiry has repeatedly heard a message sent by McInerney, who is a factional ally of federal opposition leader, Angus Taylor, to a Reformer advising of a plan to “shake down Angus for 10K”.
Taylor has not been named in Icac’s allegations and has repeatedly denied he ever made payments to the Reformers.
Lisa Cox
Tasmania must be prepared for ‘risk of mass mortality event’ after bird flu detected
Tasmania’s environment minister, Guy Barnett, said the community “must be prepared for the risk of a mass mortality event”.
He said Tasmania had worked closely with the federal government to develop protection plans for the most at-risk species including the critically endangered orange-bellied parrot, the Tasmanian devil, the shy albatross, the short-tailed shearwater, the Furneaux white-fronted tern, the fairy and little tern, Australian and long-nosed fur seal, and the Australasian gannet.
Barnett said as soon as the state received approval it would begin vaccinating up to 350 captive orange-bellied parrots:
We’ve been working with the commonwealth to get approval to vaccinate our orange-bellied parrots, and I’m very pleased that we’re now very close to being able to commence that work ahead of our scheduled release of birds to the wild.
He said the captive facility at Five Mile beach was central to the national breeding program and already operated under strict biosecurity arrangements.
Additional protective measures, including specialised shade cloth infrastructure, are being implemented to reduce the risk of disease transmission from wild birds to captive parrots.
Victorian premier tells students planning to walk out in protest against Pauline Hanson to ‘stay in school’
Benita Kolovos
At the end of his press conference, Victorian premier Ben Carroll was asked about the national student protests against One Nation and Pauline Hanson.
Thousands of school students will attend protests around the country today, including in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane, Newcastle and Wollongong.
Carroll said:
First and foremost, my message to every student is: if you want to change the world, stay at school, focus on what your learning is in the classroom. I understand they’re angry with the sentiment and the policies of One Nation, but the best way to change your future in the world is to get an education and to stay in school.
‘We should learn from the mistakes from the past’: Albanese
Anthony Albanese says the bailout comes back to jobs and sovereign capability, hammering in the point of Australia not being at the end of supply chains.
This is pretty front of mind at the moment, with the world having experienced multiple supply chain crunches due to global conflict in recent years.
He brings up the death of the car manufacturing industry and the closure of oil refineries in Australia as mistakes from the past that governments should learn from.
The fact that oil refineries shut in this country under the former government that now we’re having to go out there and look at how do we become more sovereign. How do we become more resilient? And the idea that we would sit back and watch this facility just disappear is not in Australia’s national interest.
This will produce a return to Australia. This is connected up with an increasing clean energy, which will drive this change through. It’s connected up with not just the jobs that are created directly here, but their indirect jobs that will flow through the manufacturing sector right throughout this country.
David McBride to leave prison after parole granted
Tom McIlroy
David McBride is being released from prison in Canberra this morning.
He has served his full non-parole period of 27 months.
In May 2024, the former army lawyer was sentenced to a maximum five years and eight months in jail for his role in stealing secret defence documents about the Afghanistan war and leaking them to the media.
McBride pleaded guilty to three charges in November after the court upheld a commonwealth intervention to withhold key evidence the government argued had the potential to jeopardise “the security and defence of Australia”. The charges included stealing commonwealth information and passing that on to journalists at the ABC.
The attorney general, Michelle Rowland, approved McBride’s parole request this morning.
A spokesperson for Rowland confirmed his release to Guardian Australia.
Mr McBride’s parole was considered and granted.
The government does not provide specific commentary or details about individual parole matters.
