Federal Government

PREDICTABLE: Pollies pay rise opposed by outraged public and newspaper editors who earn at least twice as much

The debate – such as it is – about politicians’ pay and their overall cost is one of the most stupid in Australian public life.

There is “outrage” today in a Herald Sun leading article or editorial on the 3% pay rise politicians got. The left-wing press like The Age also got stuck into it.

Of course, the highly accomplished and value-adding editors of these publications are not paid the roughly $150,000 per annum politicians get. It’s more like double that.

We doubt they’ll be putting their hand up anytime soon for a pay freeze or cut to reflect either the recession we nearly had or the fundamental changes undermining the newspaper industry itself that will have classifieds-dependent newspapers like The Age out of business within the decade.

And we’re not saying they should. Journalism – except at those levels or on commercial television – is not a profession paid particularly well. Like teaching, many of its practitioners do it for love. It’s a shame they can’t be or simply aren’t paid more.

A NOBLE CALLING
In our observation, politics is exactly the same. With some notable exceptions who prove the rule, there is a vast amount of self-sacrifice and financial sacrifice involved in this form of public service.

Barnaby Joyce’s call to pay the PM $1 million a year, and the Opposition Leader $600K pa sounds a little crazy and it will never happen. But consider that in Singapore, that’s exactly what they do, they pay their ministers a very high salary, vaguely in line with what senior corporate executives get. They say it significantly reduces the risk of corruption and appropriately rewards those wisely governing budgets of billions. They pay their President S$3.9 million and PM about the same. There’s not a minister earning less than $1.5 million per annum.

But it’s useful Barnaby has stepped up to the plate on this issue.

Too many politicians privately whine about the deal they get, but they’d never be caught dead making a public argument about it.

After all, they’ve seen a Prime Minister gob off profanely at his parliamentary underlings on an issue related to their office expenses and the result was a rise in his approval ratings.

The silence – other than from bravado Barnaby – will continue.

MOON-LIGHTING
Meanwhile, Parliamentary Secretary Bill Shorten has perhaps shown the future direction for some of his less fortunate parliamentary colleagues who if some newspaper editors have their way might have to start moon-lighting, doing odd jobs and such.

Shorten donated his services to the excellent Variety charity, and he’ll be horrified to know that we know and now you know that  his carwash services sold for a sum of no less than $2000 in a frenzied storm of bidding at the Crown Palladium room on Wednesday where the charity held its annual Grand Final luncheon.

This is surely a source of income for many other income-challenged public figures.

We’re not yet sure who won the Shorten bid-fest, but the possibility of a phone bid from his occasional foe ETU boss Dean Mighell – currently in the PNG meting out jungle justice – is indeed a delicious one.

Patriots will recall that Mighell is the proud driver of an enormous Nissan Pajero ‘monster truck’ with tyres so big they wouldn’t be out of place on one of those big vehicles you see in open cut mines.

Pajero is of course Latin American Spanish for “wanker”. Although Mighell’s recent tough stance on communist China might have made us think twice about the union militant. We also hear on the grapevine that Deano went on a European tour recently, essentially a work trip. He didn’t get much time off but found time to visit Dachau, the location of the infamous former Nazi concentration camp in Germany. We hear it moved him very deeply, as you could imagine it would.

Could the Pajero driver, who uses the vehicle for hunting despite a brief flirtation with the Greens political party, be on the verge of a patriotic conversion? Perhaps seeing Bill sud up his monster truck could be enough to swing him…

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