Australian executive remuneration declines

Australia's top executives experienced a 20 per cent decline in remuneration last year, in reaction to the economic downturn.

According to The Australian Financial Review's annual salary survey, shareholder anger over excessive board-level compensation packages led to an overall decline in the remuneration of the country's top executives in 2008.

However, a chief executive working for one of the country's top 300-listed companies still earns an average of $2.3 million annually, which is more than 50-times the average wage.

This figure has been recorded despite a second consecutive year of median pay declines.

Sharan Burrow, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, welcomed the falls in remuneration, but suggested that more action needed to be taken.

She said: "It is only fair that chief executives should have taken a pay cut last year when they were expecting similar restraint from their workforce, but this comes after years of growth in executive salaries which outstripped rises in average earnings."

Earlier this year, the Productivity Commission published a government-backed report on corporate governance which stopped short of recommending a binding cap on pay.