![CPA boss Alex Malley was indignant on the ABC's The Business on Thursday evening.](/content/dam/images/g/v/x/9/1/p/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gwjezp.png/1496401538936.jpg)
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Alex Malley caught our attention, as he did yours, by his own extravagant efforts to do so. The billboards, the TV ads, the schmoozing at Sydney's power diners, the pointy-end flying. The hackneyed rags-to-riches shtick, the ludicrous motivational guff and, in person, the genuinely comical egomania.
Like so many others, I was amused and mystified. Who was this relative nobody so brazenly on the make? Who was paying for all of it? And what the hell did it have to do with accounting?
When we learnt that in 2014, Malley asked Channel Nine chief David Gyngell to put him in the network's Christmas promos with Karl Stefanovic and Peter Overton, we were hooked.
Like any self-respecting Messiah, adulation is demanded, voraciously. And now that fame has metastasised to notoriety, Malley's reflex – again, to type – is indignation.
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Watching him, tremulous and ashen, on ABC's The Business on Thursday evening, scrap and snarl at questions about CPA's performance and secrecy – his $1.8 million salary having been dragged out of him after months of pressure – was akin to watching a traffic accident.
Malley clung to the claim CPA had attracted 45,000 new members in the four years to December 2016 and that member retention is 98.3 per cent. Challenged that total membership in that period has grown from 144,000 to just 160,000, a net increase of 16,000, Malley could or would not explain how 29,000 (net) members could quit, yet retention be 98.3 per cent. No amount of media training and braggadocio can make 144,000 + 45,000 = 160,000. Malley's obfuscation was damning.
The former Macquarie Uni lecturer instead laboured on his commercial success. "You have to understand that we've raised $60 million in surpluses in eight years." But CPA is not a business, it is a not-for-profit members' organisation. Surpluses – ultimately profits – are not its purpose, nor is growth for its own sake. Brand recognition does nothing for existing members, who are compelled to pay their dues each year to maintain their designation – ultimately a licence to practice.
Surplus monies should be returned to its members through lower fees or training and services investment, not stockpiled, and not spent on building a cult brand around its CEO. But Malley won't hear it. He's like Comical Ali on the hills outside Baghdad. "This is a good news story!" he insisted down the barrel of Aunty's studio camera, brittley resolute. The most disturbing part is that he almost sounds like he believes it.
But worst, surely, was when he singled out "about six members" for denigration. "Understand that this handful of members who've [sic] been named in the last three months have [sic] set up a website registered in Iceland. This is a very interesting aspect."
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There are 1300 of these members, and the founders of their website registered it offshore because CPA Australia employees had phoned individual members who had criticised Malley or the CPA board in LinkedIn discussion groups or on Twitter, threatening legal action against them. "Every single email that leaves CPA Australia every single day calls for member feedback," Malley said. What he did not say is that while positive feedback is welcome, negative feedback is met with displeasure and intimidation.
In recent weeks, a realisation of what Malley and his allies have orchestrated over the past eight years seems to have crystallised quite dramatically in the minds of CPAs and throughout the white-collar professions more broadly. Whether the whole game is up remains a momentous choice for Malley's masters: what's left of CPA Australia's board. Nominations for its four vacancies closed on Monday, 24 hours before Malley's pay was finally disclosed to members. That's hardly an accident.
![CPA Australia pay details.](/content/dam/images/g/w/i/h/e/f/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1496396296820.png)
![When we learned that in 2014, Malley asked Channel Nine chief David Gyngell to put him in the network's Christmas promos ...](/content/dam/images/g/v/7/n/z/i/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1496388190315.jpg)