Transurban Director Sam Mostyn called for Australia to "rebuild...

Transurban Director Sam Mostyn called for Australia to "rebuild an economy that works for all including our most disadvantaged". Two days later, Transurban hiked its tolls (on the M2, Eastern Distributor, Lane Cove Tunnel and Cross City Tunnel in Sydney and on Melbourne's CityLink) in the middle of an economic crisis.

These sure are fecund days for instances of regrettable timing, and next on our (extensive) list of businesspeople whose heartless actions have betrayed their valiant words is professional company directorSamantha Mostyn.

Last Monday, March 30, the boardroom veterangrandly predicted"our community will not be the same" after the coronavirus crisis because "no longer will the headline growth of GDP be the barometer for the health and resilience of our society and the economy". The tender words of someone who never in her executive career ran a profit and loss statement.

Sam Mostyn is one of the rare directors with core experience in human relations.

"We should not lose this remarkable moment to collaboratively rebuild our uniquely Australian society and an economy that can deliver for all." Honestly, what does that even mean? Did she accidentally swallow a focus group?

"Our focus should be on how we work together now to ensure that we rebuild an economy that works for all including our most disadvantaged…"

These motherhood statements really are the pits. Australia is the land of Medicare, the NDIS and where, thanks to family tax benefits, circa 40 per cent of Australian households pay no net tax. Yet there needs to be greater social welfare, says, fair dinkum, the chairman of Citibank!

Mostyn made these remarks in the heady midst of corporate self-deprivation for the national interest: a cavalcade of boards has foregone directors’ fees, Telstra lifted all broadband data caps and BHP gave $50 million to COVID-19-affected mining communities,et cetera.

But two days later, Transurban – on whose board Mostyn has been perched since 2010 – proceeded withscheduled toll increasesacross its portfolio of freeways in the middle of an economic crisis. Bastardry without pause from an untouchable, blood-sucking monopoly. Why didn't Transurban's board intervene to cancel the price hike? Shouldn't Transurban be (as per the Mostyn memo) collaboratively rebuilding the economy for all those stony-broke motorists in outer Melbourne and Western Sydney? Oh, and Transurban directors – led by theinimitableLindsay Maxsted– are yet to "work together" to propose any pay cut for themselves.

Mostyn’s cheap words even extended to this old chestnut: "Our community will not be the same as the one that entered this crisis." Sorry, but what’s with this mindless,faux-wise vibedu journow emanating from rent-a-quotes everywhere that goes something like "we’ll never be the same again"? Actually, we will be the same. Almost exactly the f---ing same. In a few months’ time, life will revert to near normal, as it did at the conclusion of two world wars and the Great Depression they bookended, the 1987 crash, 9/11 and the 2009 financial crisis.

In the eye of the GFC, then prime ministerKevin Ruddevenwrote inThe Monthly(please set down any hot beverages before continuing) that "from time to time in human history there occur events of a truly seismic significance, events that mark a turning point between one epoch and the next, when one orthodoxy is overthrown and another takes its place… There is a sense that we are now living through just such a time." Which of course we weren’t. Virtually nothing had changed at all. Except Labor’s caucus did soon figure out Kevin, and wisely rissoled the prick.

There’s a dismal immaturity in this reflex to hyperbolise a changed future – especially in the newspaper, as ‘thought leadership’. But the irony’s in the one thing that will always be immutable: not even an alien invasion could stop Transurban screwing the travelling public.