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Key events
Union demands government bring ATO’s outsourced phone calls in-house
Luca Ittimani
A top union has warned Australians their tax time phone calls to tax office employees are being directed to lower-paid workers at outsourced call centres.
The Australian Taxation Office is set to face landmark “same job, same pay” hearings in the coming month, with a call centre worker saying his outsource colleagues were paid up to 40% less than their public service counterparts.
The Community and Public Sector Union has today lodged reply submissions supporting the Fair Work Commision case. In a statement, it said outsource workers were answering the same calls as ATO employees, with the same systems, equipment, policies and procedures. The union said they should therefore have the same pay and employment conditions.
The CPSU said it submitted outsource labour hire companies were wrongly claiming they provided a specialised service and value for money. It described answering calls as “core ATO work” that should be brought back into the public service.
Melissa Donnelly, the CPSU’s national secretary, called on the Albanese government to direct the ATO to bring the call centre work in-house. She said:
These outsourced call centre workers are doing the same job as their ATO counterparts, but with worse pay and conditions. . …
Right now, millions of Australians are doing their taxes. They need to know they are talking to fully trained and trusted public sector employees – not outsourced workers being underpaid by profit-driven firms.
You can read about the case here:
Husic warns Labor over Gaza policy
Labor risks losing voter support in a similar way to the Democrats in the US if it continues to respond to questions around Palestinian rights with “fear and loathing”, former cabinet minister Ed Husic has said.
The western Sydney MP, the most outspoken Labor member on the war in Gaza, also wants a dedicated federal police team to monitor dual Australian-Israeli citizens who travel to the Middle East to fight for the Israel Defense Forces, Australian Associated Press reports.
“What I am deeply concerned about is there are elements of fear and loathing that drive the way we respond to these issues,” Husic told a Labor Friends of Palestine event over the weekend.
Fear to have your own view, and loathing if you do.
First reported by Labor Tribune, which bills itself as a voice for the “Marxist left” in the labour movement, Husic’s comments were made on the sidelines of the NSW Labor conference in Sydney.
They foreshadow a possible battle over Palestinian rights at Labor’s national conference later in July.
While elements of the party are keen to ventilate the issue at the party’s most significant policymaking forum, multiple Labor sources confirmed to AAP debate was likely to be tightly stage-managed and relatively sedate.
Husic said the Labor party he’d grown up in had similar debates and went on to win multiple elections.
He warned the political movement risked losing support if it continued to stifle what he said was “legitimate debate” on the rights of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
“That cannot be the way that we continue. Otherwise, we will see what happened to the US Democrats happen with us as our members and supporters drift off, and we cannot have that,” Husic said.
Good morning, Nick Visser here to snag the blog. Let’s get to it.
Luca Ittimani
Luca has more on the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors’ CEO pay report, which reveals that Life360’s founder Chris Hulls was the top-paid chief executive of an Australian-listed company in 2025’s financial year.
Hull earned $47.7m in realised pay, which was about 437 times more than the average Australian full-time adult worker.
The other top earners were also heads of ASX-listed companies headquartered overseas: ResMed’s Mick Farrell took home $35.1m and News Corp’s Robert Thomson $33.5m. Thomson had been last year’s top earner.
Out of the 200 biggest ASX-listed companies, the CEO with the lowest realised pay in 2025 was Temple & Webster’s Mark Coulter at $506,000.
ACSI’s Louise Davidson said Australian investors were doing a good job at keeping a lid on executive pay. Fixed pay for the top 100 companies rose 4% to a median $1.83m, still below 2012 levels. The difference is made up by bonuses: the median ASX100 CEO received 70.7% of their maximum bonus, on the higher end. Just five CEOs missed out on their bonus. Nine CEOs received termination payments averaging $2.2m each.
Top 100 CEOs paid a median $4.8m in 2025, analysis shows
Luca Ittimani
Chief executives of Australia’s 100 biggest companies earned a median $4.8m in realised pay in 2025’s financial year, a 16% increase from 2024, a new report has found.
The Australian Council of Superannuation Investors has calculated take-home pay, which includes reported pay plus bonuses, vested shares and other extras.
At the 100 biggest ASX companies, the $4.8m median was the highest recorded over the 12 years the calculations have been done. Two Australian-based CEOs had realised pay above $30m – Macquarie’s Shemara Wikramanayake and Goodman’s Greg Goodman – where none did in 2024. Incumbent CEOs tended to see higher pay gains. The average hit $6m.
ACSI found the gap between top CEOs and ordinary workers was the same as in 2024, with chief executives again earning 55 times the average Australian adult’s weekly full-time earnings as of May 2025. Average earnings have slowed since then so the gap may have widened.
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories and then it’ll be Nick Visser with the main action.
Ed Husic has warned the Labor party that it risks losing voter support in a similar way to the Democrats in the US if it continues to respond to questions around Palestinian rights with “fear and loathing”. More coming up.
Chief executives of Australia’s 100 biggest companies earned $4.8m in realised pay in 2025’s financial year, a 16% increase from 2024. We have more details on that shortly.
