Alan Joyce, chief executive officer of labour beleaguered Qantas Airways Ltd., has decided not to accept his bonus and pay rise for this year, in what could be a fitting gesture in light of the continuing massive fiscal crisis affecting both local and international companies.

Mr Joyce will get to keep his base pay of $2.3 million but will give up the bonuses which brought his compensation last year to roughly $5 million. He is the latest to join a list of high-profile Australian executives who are racing to counter investor angst of investors on high pay cuts but poor performance. The CEOs BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Bluescope Steel have started the trend in the past few weeks.

Mr Joyce's refusal to receive his bonus happens three days before Australia's largest carrier announces its results on Aug. 23, where Qantas is expected to announce its first annual loss in 17 years as a publicly traded company.

"It's absolutely appropriate that when company returns go down, executive pay should go down as well," Mr Joyce told The Australian Financial Review. "It's been an extremely tough year for Qantas shareholders and what we want to show is that my pay has to have a huge correlation with the profitability of the company."

"That executives don't receive bonuses when shareholders are on their knees is exactly how the system should work," Dean Paatsch, co-founder of corporate governance advisory group Ownership Matters, told Bloomberg News. "Giving up bonuses is a gesture that's open to every executive. Very few take it so good luck to those that do."

In June, contained in a statement to the stock market, the airline said it expected an underlying profit before tax of between $50 million to $100 million, down from the previous year's $552 million.

But the group representing many small investors wants CEOS take actual pay cuts, not just bonus reductions.

"In the current reporting season, where the companies haven't achieved their targets and the executives really haven't really achieved their results for shareholders, then they must certainly hand back their bonuses," Vas Kolessnikoff, chief executive of the Australian Shareholders Association, told ABC News, noting investors expect executive base pay rates to reflect both the size and performance of the relevant business.

"One of my favourite sayings is, if you turn a big business into a small business, you should cut the excesses all the way back to small business rates," he added.