Bondi Beach bounty – $5000 a day
· Michael West
Australians are alive to the fact that our most senior public servants are in receipt of out-of-control salaries.
The number of departmental secretaries earning more than $1 million a year has jumped from two to seven. A million dollars per annum is $2,740 a day.
Visit asg-reflektory.pl for more information.
In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, these salaries are a scam. But documents just released under FOI show something worse (but better, if you’re a retired secretary).
Fat Cat bureaucrats. Rem Tribunal out of touch, out of sight
On December 22, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese engaged former Defence Secretary Dennis Richardson to conduct an (not really) independent review into Australia’s federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies following the Bondi terrorist attack.
The FOI reveals Richardson is being paid $5,000 per day.
Dennis Richardson’s Bondi Inquiry Contract Rate (Source: FOI)
78-year-old Richardson has had a distinguished public service career, serving as the Director General of ASIO from 1996 to 2005, then as the Australian Ambassador to the United States to 2010, then as Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to 2012 and then, finally, as mentioned above, Secretary of Defence to 2017.
But since he left, he really hasn’t left.
He’s a roving insider that has fared well from the public teat in retirement with over $1.3M in sole sourced gigs including a Review of the Legal Framework of the National Intelligence Community, a review of Integrity Concerns and Governance in Regional Processing Administration (Home Affairs) a review into the (non) Transfer of 2003 Cabinet Records and a review into the structure, governance, performance and direction of the Australian Submarine Agency.
His Bondi gig adds another $490K to the bounty.
Richardson, because of his earlier role as Director-General of ASIO and through his review of the National Intelligence Community’s framework is in some sense being asked to mark his own homework. And all at a very good rate … for him.
Who’d want to be a secretary when you charge twice the price for being a recalled secretary?
Is Albo’s ‘Richardson Review’ into Bondi independent or for a roving insider?