Public Eye | APS top earners, more on Mike Pezzullo

Public Eye certainly has, and luckily annual reporting requirements mean that information is at our fingertips.

Secretaries' salaries aren't a total surprise, given the Remuneration Tribunal publishes those on an annual basis, but bonuses and other benefits can reorder the rankings.

Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Glyn Davis is the top salary earner, and collected a total package of $976,230 last financial year, but Defence secretary Greg Moriarty and Defence Force chief Angus Campbell both collected more in their total remuneration packets than Mr Davis, thanks to hefty superannuation payments.

General Campbell earned top dollar at $1,062,702 (wonder what Jacqui Lambie has to say about that?) while Mr Moriarty followed closely behind on $1,006,474.

Attorney-General's Department secretary Katherine Jones also did pretty well for herself, collecting $974,198, again thanks to a nice lump of super.

The annual reports also give information on the remuneration of other "key management personnel" (KMP) in the department. That generally means people who have direct or indirect responsibility for planning, directing and controlling the activities of your agency.

We rifled through to find out the top KMP earners in each of the 16 departments, plus the Australian Taxation Office and Services Australia.

One former agency head who can't be ignored was Defence's senior AUKUS adviser Kathryn Campbell, who earned by far the top KMP package at $835,970.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars behind her was Home Affairs' Michael Outram, who leads the Australian Border Force and pocketed $692,850.

Infrastructure deputy secretary Richard Windeyer earned a nice $584,937, followed by the Australian Taxation Office's chief operating officer Jacqui Curtis on $569,848 and Health's chief medical officer Paul Kelly on $559,572.

The main public sector union is mobilising the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation to ramp up pressure on the government to revise its service-wide pay offer of 11.2 per cent over three years.

The CSIRO Staff Association - a section of the Community and Public Sector Union - wrote to employees last week, saying it had lodged a Protected Action Ballot for members in CSIRO.

The email, sighted by Public Eye, said out of 1500 polled staff association members, 81 per cent called for a better pay offer.

The association said while enterprise agreement negotiations with CSIRO Executive were ongoing, "discussions around pay are approaching an impasse".

"The decision to proceed to a protected action ballot has not been taken lightly. We are taking this step so that we are prepared to increase pressure on CSIRO Executive to secure an improved pay offer," the email said.

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The staff association encouraged all members to vote "yes" to all proposals on the ballot.

The union has already escalated industrial action in several other agencies, including Services Australia, the Fair Work Ombudsman, and the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations.

Public Eye reached out to the CPSU for comment, but did not hear back at the time of writing.

Australian War Memorial director Matt Anderson was eager to let parliamentarians know just how well the memorial is doing at the last round of Senate estimates.

The metric for measuring that success? Tripadvisor ratings.

Public Eye missed the session during the whirlwind week back in October, but recently spotted Mr Anderson's tabled opening statement.

"Despite the challenges," he said, referring to ongoing, and controversial, development at the AWM, "we continue to receive outstanding feedback from our visitors.

"We have received a 'best of the best' rating from Tripadvisor again this year, which puts us in the top 1 per cent of all destinations worldwide, and we were recently ranked in the top 10 of free tourist attractions worldwide."

Parliament House will soon be home to the biggest electric vehicle charging station in Canberra, having installed 10 of a total 58 EV chargers for the building in its public underground car park.

Well it turns out these charging stations come with a hefty price tag. Public Eye has learned it will cost $2.07 million to install all 58 chargers across the building.

The Department of Parliamentary Services has a plan to break even, though: it costs $0.43 cents/kilowatt, plus a $0.50 cent connection fee to charge your vehicle.

The department says the funds will recoup the energy and administration costs for operating the machines, and make the whole endeavour cost neutral.

DPS is working with its project partners to finalise installation of the remaining stations across the building's five other car parks over the coming months.

The Department of Veterans' Affairs is serious about its policy on email signature blocks. Serious enough to have an eight-page policy document setting out dos and don'ts.

There are three approved signature blocks for use by department employees, with pretty standard requirements around what's included (logo, website, phone number, etc.)

Of course, there are also formatting requirements. "All signature blocks must be in black text using Calibri and at least size 10 font," for example.

Want to make a tweak? The assistant secretary of communications will have to sign off on that first.

Public Eye must 'fess up to our shortcomings. In a letter to the editor last week, Gordon Fyfe of Kambah, pointed out we had failed to serve the public interest in our item on Mike Pezzullo (who our photographer snapped walking in Kingston) in last week's edition.

"Unfortunately the article neglects to answer intriguing questions: Was he ambling or rambling? Was he striding or stalking? Why wasn't he using an umbrella? Was he going to or from Kingston? If one stakes out Kingston next time it rains, would one be likely to see him oneself?" Mr Fyfe queried.

We will say he certainly seemed to be striding - away from our snapper - as this additional shot indicates.

To make up for it, we've provided a gallery of all the shots.

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