A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Opinion
The commentary surrounding Eastland Group's CEO salary rather begs the question of who is responsible and what can be done about it. Look at the Auckland City Council (ACC), by way of comparison. The ACC has a budget of $31.8 billion over 10 years, averaging at $3.18 billion per annum.
The chief executive of ACC gets $830,000pa. Now, our few-hundred million enterprises are not to be sneezed at, but pale in comparison to that large-scale operation. Why the comparable salary?
We need to go back a few steps to look at how a board of directors could arrive at such a decision.
The board of Eastland Group Ltd is appointed by the trustees of Trust Tairawhiti, who are in turn appointed by GDC councillors.
If the councillors have previously generally appointed business/corporate types to Trust Tairawhiti, then it's more likely that those trustees in turn appoint like-minded directors to the board of EGL, directors who are perfectly comfortable with the remuneration awarded to the CEO.
So what can be done? The trustees could decide to refresh the board in the immediate future, but change can certainly be achieved in the longer term by councillors appointing people to TT who are competent, common-sense types with a record of service to the community —and most importantly have no propensity for financial profligacy.
