ACTEW chairman John Mackay says he has no reason to resign over the under-reporting of the water utility's managing director's salary by $234,000 because it had been an ''honest mistake''.
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Chief Minister Katy Gallagher said on Wednesday that her trust in ACTEW's board and management had been challenged by revelations that Mark Sullivan's $855,000 pay deal was reported as $621,000 in an annual report and an ACTEW letter to the shareholders in September 2011.
''It takes a lot to get me furious, but I would say furious," she said.
''From the shareholders' point of view we have to have that trust in terms of advice coming from the corporation.
''I think this incident alone challenges that trust.''
Mr Sullivan is the best-paid water executive in Australia by a margin of more than $200,000 and Ms Gallagher has demanded that ACTEW provide evidence that his pay packet is justified.
The ACTEW board was meeting on Wednesday night to discuss the controversy raging around the salary, but Mr Mackay told The Canberra Times before the meeting that "what will be, will be," if the monopoly water supplier could not make its case to the Chief Minister and Treasurer Andrew Barr.
Earlier on Wednesday, Mr Mackay conceded that the utility had inadvertently misled its shareholders but that he had not offered his resignation to the Chief Minister.
Opposition Leader Jeremy Hanson said he wanted a briefing from both the company and the government, adding that "something had gone badly wrong".
Mr Mackay said the Chief Minister had asked a number of questions and he was working on supplying answers.
"I remain hopeful that we convince the shareholders that there was an honest mistake, there was an honest attempt to correct it and that Mark's salary, in the circumstances, is reasonable," he said.
"What will be will be, if we can't convince them."
He repeated that the under-reporting was a simple mistake.
"We gave her a wrong set of numbers, it was not a conspiracy, it was an accident," he said.
The chairman said that in August 2011 the company was called by a government bureaucrat and asked to advise the government what would be in the annual report about Mr Sullivan's salary, which had proved controversial in the past.
"What the person who drafted the letter did was had a look at the annual report and pulled the information out of there," Mr Mackay said.
"So whilst it may seem that we misled them twice, we misled them once."
He said that the four-month delay in telling the government about the discrepancy was taken up with lawyers, auditors and accountants ensuring that the figure and protocol were correct.
It was only a few weeks ago that ''they came to me … and said that we've finally got all the information that we need, you should now write this letter to the Treasurer, saying you need to fix this thing up," Mr Mackay said. "So I wrote to the Treasurer on March 8."
Mr Mackay said he had been summoned by the Chief Minister in the days since the under-reporting had been revealed.
"I was called in and she was very disappointed in the first place and asked me how the error had been made in the first place and asked me how could you make this error, why did you make it, etc,'' he said.
Mr Mackay said Ms Gallagher asked why it had taken so long to tell her of the mistake and said that she believed the salary was "very high".
Asked if he offered his resignation to the Chief Minister, Mr Mackay said he had not. "No, I was saying to her, as best I could tell this was a stuff-up,'' he said.
Mr Hanson said like the Chief Minister, he was concerned.
"I will be seeking a briefing from both the government and ACTEW on this matter," he said.
"Someone has got something very badly wrong and does the fault lie with ACTEW, the government or both?"
