A man in a suit wearing an expensive watch (Image: Adobe)
A man in a suit wearing an expensive watch (Image: Adobe)

The Australian Financial Review occasionally wears the reputation of being a paper for people with names like Plutus P Moneyfellows, who wouldn’t feed what your family eats at Christmas to the hounds on their estate, who are so infuriated by the thought of baristas getting weekend penalty rates that their top hat simply flies off their head, landing in the caviar holder and comically splattering their dinner guests. There are days when this seems unfair. And then there are days like yesterday:

While Australia struggles with a cost of living crisis, as housing and childcare services slip from the grasp of normal people, support services are maxed out and supermarkets brace for increased shoplifting of basic food items, the AFR snorted the headline “Why CEOs should be paid more” into the back of its throat and hocked it into readers’ faces.

Perhaps feeling that the bandaid was off, that same day the paper also announced it was launching “Australia’s first prestige watch fair”. Finally, a chance for people who somehow unaccountably sleep at night to spend the equivalent of a house deposit on something that tells you what time it is, and a chance to remind Australia that the Fin not only has a watch editor, but his name is Bani McSpedden and he’s of the view that such an event was not just necessary, but overdue.

It called to mind a few of the paper’s other greatest hits:

  • Former New South Wales housing minister Pru Goward using the organ to share her views on “harnessing” the poor, citing non-specific “social workers” who “despair” at the working class’ “appalling housework, neglect of their children and, notably, their sharp and unrepentant manner when told to lift their game”. Notably.
  • James P Gorman, the Australian head of Morgan Stanley, telling the gathered luminaries at the Fin‘s business summit in Sydney to “get greedy when everybody else is scared … Right now, everybody’s scared — there are opportunities”, while outside, the city flooded.
  • The piece marvelling at all the “new skills” CEOs were mastering, thanks to the COVID-19 lockdowns, including mowing the lawn.
  • And the last time it argued (in an editorial) that CEOs deserve huge pay rises because they were so good for Australia. Bonus points for relying on PwC as an authority.