WORTHY OF THEIR HIRE.(chief executive officers)(Brief Article)

ANYONE WHO DOUBTS that greed is a mainspring of capitalism need look no further for proof an at the salaries the hierarchs of commercial corporations pay themselves once they've scrambled to the top. And not only in commerce. With the "corporatisation" of everything the myth that vast sums must be paid out to acquire "top management"--a notion much propagated by top managers themselves and those making a living out of recruiting same and questioned, it seems, by no one--has spread to non-commercial enterprises as well, as the fuss over executive salaries at Melbourne's Wesley Central Mission last year demonstrates.

"Charity funds are a largely untapped source of wealth for today's breed of manager-entrepreneur," says Rodney Milken, newly appointed CEO--on a "confidential package" believed to be in excess of $3 million a year--of the Aged, Indigent & Incapacitated World War I Veterans' Association (AIIWWVA). "Top management sees charities not as a sink for endless unprofitable welfare payments but as an underdeveloped asset enjoying a high level of public goodwill which needs for its own good to perpetuate its existence by being made self-sufficient." Under Milken's management, AIIWWVA has sold off its "dead wood" in the form of accommodation for the aged and invested the substantial capital yield from the prime inner-city sites in a new office tower "appropriate to our profile" and permanently-reserved hotel suites in London, New York, Paris and Hongkong for the use of the CEO when overseas studying trends in the charity industry. An even bigger investment has been the creation of "a new tier of fantastically able headquarters finance managers" headhunted at considerable cost to administer the charity's marketing programmes and asset expansion strategies. "Naturally we've had to pay stellar salaries to attract the right talent," explains Milken, "so you'll see why it's so necessary to a charity's survival to maximise its assets." The aged, indigent and incapacitated World War I veterans have been dispensed with as "irrelevant to a forward-looking enterprise in the twenty-first century" and placed in budget accommodation in backpackers' boarding houses. "Basically we've outsourced their welfare," says Milken, "and that's it as far as our statutory obligation to care for them is concerned."

"Charities that create a dependence culture have no place in today's increasingly competitive charity-industry marketplace," says Amanda Murdstone, power-dressed, c ellularphone-wielding appeals director ($1.4 million p.a.) of the youth charity KidSmart (formerly the Street Waifs & Barefoot Children's League of Help). "Charities exist to attract the public ...