NATIONAL Australia Bank chief economist Alan Oster was in town last week, giving a few special briefings to the bank’s business clients.
NATIONAL Australia Bank chief economist Alan Oster was in town last week, giving a few special briefings to the bank’s business clients.
Mr Oster is another of those amusing economists whose presentations are always worth a visit, blending their view of the world with an equally parched sense of humour.
At least it wasn’t gallows humour at this stage, with the bank boffin generally upbeat about Australia’s position.
While he had much to say about a strong US recovery and the fact that Australia’s 3.75 per cent forecast growth rate won’t be enough to make us a miracle economy anymore, the most interesting thing he revealed was backing up retail sales data.
You may recall how strong retail sales in the early part of this year had everyone wondering if the figures were right.
It was a case of: “I’m not spending it, are you?” every time the numbers were mentioned in conversation.
The doubt was considerable.
Yet Mr Oster said the numbers even from as recently as March were well and truly accurate.
How can he be more sure than most?
It appears that, due to having Coles-Myers business, NAB’s clearing systems handle around 60 per cent of all credit card transactions, a window on the world of retail, which offers a rare glimpse into that sector.
Importantly, Mr Oster said the hammering the tourism industry took from a fall off in international business did not flow on to the general economy.
Apparently, Australians who couldn’t travel spent their holidays at home – or at least they spent their money, one way or another.
No comparison
IN this year’s Book of Lists we’ve added a new section covering the leading public servants, ranking them by salary.
It’s fascinating to compare government executive pay rates with the corporate sector.
Firstly, the spread is similar in the top 20.
For instance, the 20th ranked executive in our list, Main Roads commissioner Greg Martin, receives about 30 per cent of salary of top ranked government executive, Western Power managing director David Eiszele.
Against that, Cable and Telecoms’ Peter Jermyn, ranked 20th among WA’s highest paid company directors receives about 24 per cent of the leader, Michael Chaney at Wesfarmers.
The consistency is there across the board, with a few high fliers paid well above the pack but the bulk of the players paid similar amounts.
There’s one big difference though. The biggest pay packet among the government executives would not crack a mention in the private sector’s top 20.
In fact, Mr Eiszele’s salary would place him around 26th.
Far from fat cats, it would be easy to argue that the bulk of WA’s leading public servants are paid quite poorly when one compares their responsibilities with their salaries.
Most intriguing are the salary levels of those at the top of the health and education departments, which rank 10th and 16th respectively among the government executive salaries.
When one considers that these two departments represent half the State Government’s budget expenditure, we’ll have to hope our political leaders have simply extracted value for money from them.
Of course, we have to remember that the ministers always take responsibility for what goes wrong, don’t they?
