Okay, point taken. The AGM wasn’t brought forward recently to pre-empt outside board nominations or for any other reason, as I claimed yesterday. However, every other point from yesterday’s item remains valid:

  • The notice of meeting and annual report shouldn’t have been cynically released just before 5pm on Friday afternoon
  • It will be the earliest ever Telstra AGM, when given all that is going the board should have actually delayed it until after the release of Sol Trujillo’s strategic plan on October 28 and after the board had settled on 2-3 new directors
  • Sol Trujillo has indeed decided to exempt himself from facing a shareholder vote when his predecessor Ziggy Switkowski put himself up for election every three years.

Interestingly, Crikey hears that it was a board decision that Donald McGauchie be the second Telstra non-executive director up for re-election this year, along with former Cochlear CEO Catherine Livingstone whose three year term was up.

Given that one third of a board must spill every year, under normal processes there would have been a ballot between McGauchie and former CSIRO chief Dr John Stocker to see who joined Livingstone in this year’s board poll as both were last re-elected in 2003. It would have been a bit rough on Charles Macek or Belinda Hutchinson to face a ballot given they were only re-elected last year.

However, the board vote that McGauchie face the vote suggests an attitude of “you got us into this mess so you can run the risk of the government voting you off the board.”

Full marks to Donald for stepping up to the plate as well. Has Australia had a more combative and gung-ho professional non-executive chairman before?