Golden parachute for Fahour

Outgoing Australia Post CEO, Ahmed Fahour, is receiving a $10.8m final pay packet from the postal monopoly that he will leave next month.

The figure includes $8.7m in bonuses, including superannuation.

Fahour announced his resignation in February, after his $5.6m annual pay packet was made public through a Senate Estimates hearing. The revelation that he was making ten times the Prime Minister’s salary, and five times as much as the head of the RBA did not go down well with the general public, and even less with printers and mailing houses, following consecutive price rises and reduced services under his reign.

Fahour denied his departure had anything to do with the naming of his salary.

His replacement, Christine Holgate, is receiving a base salary of $1.37m, with a potential bonus bringing up her pay packet near the $2.7m mark.

John Stanhope, chairman, Australia Post says, “While it is recognised that community expectations have changed since Mr Fahour’s appointment in 2010, it is not practical or possible to retrospectively change our contractual obligations to him.”

These contractual obligations are likely to never occur again, as AusPost has been stripped of its right to set the pay packets of senior executives, with the remuneration committee disbanded.

While Fahour has turned around the fortunes of Australia Post, back to profit with a focus on parcels over letters, financial experts have raised questions over the company’s financial reporting practices, which appear to benefit its parcel segment at the expense of letters, with the accounts restated some 49 times over the length of his tenure, compared with once in the six years prior.

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