Two points
1). As HR people are fond to tell those further down the rung, it's not just about the pay. Living and working in Australia offers more then monetary rewards. We should be focussed on improving CEO work life balance.
2). Have we got a skills shortage in the CEO area?

Remembering that the role of a modern CEO is find the best way possible give customers the very least possible at the highest possible cost to the customer then many CEO do a great job. It is all about money, not service.

In this role Telstra Ziggy has done a great job. The Telco's have invented a great system that is being taken up by many other industries.

Price fixing is illegal. But it is not illegal to design products amongst yourselves that make it impossible for customers to compare the cost of one product over another. No competition exists because each maximises profit in a way that cannot be competitively evaluated against a similar product.

Yes, Ziggy and the others have done a magnificent job for the share holders.
The way to limit CEO salaries is to regulate industries in a way that force them to be competitive and make full disclosures. Ziggy and the others are only the product of a sick system that has now came back to bite everyone.

Isnt the issue that the CEO's have been paid far too much for doing so little, because the performance measures were trite and inadequate.

Of course who developed the KPI's in the first place but the management of the enterprise.No surprises there.

An it may not necessarily improve with the share holders having more to say either.

As a case in point the AIG in USA is under the pump because they are using the Govt rescue funds to pay bonuses. When the bosses were queried by the Obama administration they responded by saying that the legal advice that they have, is that there are contracturual obligations between the company and the empoyees to the pay the bonuses, no matter what.

Given that the AIG made $100bn losses over the last few quarters one wanders what sort of bonus contract was constructed that enabled payouts to be made even if what the employees had done, bankrupted the entity.

Only the Americans would be so incompetent and stupid.

Unfortunately like the subprime risk, which they passed down the line and poisoned the world's banking systems, it is the rest of us that have to pay for their idiotic and uncommercial behaviour.

Do we have a shortage of skilled people to step into senior roles?
No way! We have a glut being held back by the "grey ceiling".
CEOs and boards effectively form a cartel in australia. It has nothing to do with quality...the Mafia bosses get paid heaps too but this doesn't necessarily mean it is good for anyone else. Current CEOs are more akin to Mafia than NASA as their "business" skills are all around confidence and people manipulation.
If you think that $5M salaries are good at *any* level of the economy then please prove it with hard facts.
From what I've seen for the numbers, and in my own workplace, that over paying people attracts the "seagull" managers and psychopaths.
The good people will gravitate to the jobs they love and excel at: Greedy folk have caused this mess by forgetting that the business speak has implications in the real world: "leverage" is just "debt". "offshoring" is often "asset stripping", and the good old "profit drive" really means "regressive: more to the rich".
It is time for new rules for execs and boards: Not for commie reasons, but to de-fluke the capitalist system from the excess of parasites inflicted upon it's lifeblood: Companies.

It could well be argued that importing CEO's from overseas on high salaries is a sure recipe for disaster. These people are the ones who have gotten the world into its current financial trouble and we had better do without them. We need more people like Gerry Harvey who is quite content to take home a modest salary while he operates his company in a more prudent fashion. We can do without the high flying risk takers whose only thought is what they can take back to America when they retire early.

If the cap proposal is creeping socialism, can somebody please think of something we can give to scoialism so it can get up on its feet and start running.