Is this how $43b will be managed?
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday February 11, 2010
It doesn't matter whether Mike Kaiser is qualified for the $450,000-a-year job of chief of "government relations" in the National Broadband Network Co, charged with setting up the $43 billion network. The process of his appointment appears tainted by political interference. Governments and government corporations must not only avoid favouritism, but also the appearance of it.Kaiser's name was suggested to the NBN Co executive chairman, Mike Quigley, by the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy. The position was never openly advertised and no shortlist of candidates was drawn up. Kaiser is a long-time Labor apparatchik, having been briefly a state Labor MP in Queensland and then chief of staff to Labor premiers in NSW and Queensland. His parliamentary career came to an abrupt end in 2001 after his involvement in a branch-stacking rort in 1986 came to light - a "youthful indiscretion" as Conroy flippantly puts it, but one that plays particularly badly in circumstances like this.It makes Kevin Rudd's pretensions to squeaky clean government questionable, and his attacks on excessive executive pay, inspired by the global financial crisis, ring hollow. Of course the Howard government adopted a ruthless preference for appointing perceived friends to government jobs and boards, and dropping perceived critics. But it is no defence for Labor that the Liberals are not guiltless on this front. Nor do Rudd's cunning appointments of the Liberals Peter Costello, Tim Fischer and Brendan Nelson to plum jobs provide cover for a perk like this.In Kaiser's case, particularly because of the likely appearance of impropriety in appointing a Labor "mate"; transparent process should have been followed. If, as Quigley and others suggest, Kaiser is the right man for the job, then he would have demonstrated this through a competitive interview process just as well, without a fast-track into the chair.Nor is it excused by Quigley's casual insistence that the manner of Kaiser's appointment was not unusual, as 40 per cent of his staff had come into their jobs via "referral" because NBN Co was "a start-up ... in rapid growth mode". NBN is a government-owned company, and while it is independent, it should be scrupulous in its hiring procedures. It owes at least that to the taxpayers who are paying Kaiser's huge salary, double what he previously earned and $100,000 more than the prime minister's salary. And exactly why does a government-owned corporation, implementing one of the prime minister's top spending priorities, need a manager for government relations?
© 2010 Sydney Morning Herald