G8’s Carroll defends his big pay rise
THE boss of Gold Coastbased childcare giant G8 Education has defended a massive 10 per cent pay increase he received from accusations it does not meet community standards.
Yesterday shareholders at the annual meeting at Mantra on View in Surfers Paradise voted to approve the remuneration report for the past year, which contained the 10.4 per cent salary increase to $840,000, as well as granting performance rights to managing director Gary Carroll worth close to $630,000.
It comes as the average cost of childcare has increased by $302 a year, or $480 a year for parents with children in care 48 weeks a year.
The salary increase had drawn criticism from Labor’s early education spokeswoman Amanda Rishworth that the remuneration was out of line with community expectations.
G8 is the largest for-profit childcare provider in Australia by a large margin.
After yesterday’s meeting Mr Carroll told the Bulletin the salary increase was granted following an independent process using benchmarks from comparable companies.
“I’d say that my salary was benchmarked and set based off similar roles and similar complexities and similar sectors so it would be in line with organisations of our scale in our sector for my role,” he said.
“If that then means it is in line with what the community expects of similar roles and similar complexity I’d say, yeah OK.”
Mr Carroll’s salary compares to average executive pay of $355,222, $252,140 and $167,000 at Goodstart Early Learning, KU Children’s Services and C & K Childcare.
However, these are all not-for-profit organisations.
Mr Carroll said he is “absolutely” focused on cost pressures for parents with children in childcare.
“As a company we are working hard to provide best-value and service and quality for our parents and it is something that is a key part of our strategy.”
Mr Carroll took home a pay packet worth $905,290 last year including a bonus of $145,000.
At the meeting yesterday 98.11 of shareholder votes were cast in favour of the remuneration report.
The shareholder vote considered “advisory”.
It was a similar story for the issue of performance rights to Mr Carroll worth close to $630,000 with 97.44 of votes in favour.
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