You may recall that there’s a nice little rort going where MPs and senators get an annual electoral allowance to cover their costs in getting out and about in their electorates, and that if that money ($32,000 for most electorates, $46,000 for the big rural ones) doesn’t get spent then it goes into pollie’s pocket.
And some unkind observers have noted that around two thirds of electorates are incredibly safe for the party that holds them and that therefore there’s little incentive for their MPs to go out and speak to the grotty, unwashed public – especially if the money they don’t spend goes to themselves.
For example, New England which has become one of the safest seats for the National Party in the country.
So naturally this is an important issue for its MP Barnaby Joyce, former National Party leader and current nothing, who took to Sunrise with Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon to talk about how much they totally deserve whatever money they can shake out of the public purse, thanks, because MERIT.
First up, Joelie was arguing that sure, there’s an argument politicians should show that they’re being as fiscally disciplined as they’re demanding the public be, but also: nah.
“You need to pay [politicians] enough to attract good people to the career… if you were looking for a new CEO and said ‘we’re gonna pay you $200k a year and every second night you’re going to have to go for example the Lions Changeover Dinner and it’ll cost you and your wife about $100 each night,’ then you’d probably find yourself losing candidates.”
And cheers, Joel, for illustrating a) impressive unconscious sexism with assuming that the “good people” that you’re attracting to the career are dudes, and b) showing how wildly out of touch he is about the cost of accomodation for the unsubsidised, unless that CEO was scoring some amazing mid-week hotel deals.
Oh, and c) missing the point because this isn’t about pay, it’s about pocketing unused expenses.
Not to be outdone, Barn showed some impressive bipartisan support by also blurring the income/expenses thing, but he decided to do so in an excitingly surreal word salad of a response.
“No employee will ever say I don’t think I’m entitled to what I’m being paid,” he began, and then…
“It’s always a great debate because people think politicians get paid too much and that’s fair enough, and later on you want to talk about the Chinese influence and how we’re going to manage that and how we’re going to deal with that in the future, and when you’re the Prime Minister you’re on a pretty good wicket, but to try to attract the base talent in you have to have a mechanism get somebody out of the private sector to get someone out of the defence force, to get them out of the agriculture sector in such a way as to bring them in. And it’s stupid to say in any employee ‘I’m going to start saying paid too much or my entitlements are too much’, and you can say that and you’ll be a really popular person for about ten minutes and then you’ll get paid less and life goes on.”
Barnaby Joyce, taken by the spirit of Sunrise
Again, the topic under discussion: should politicians get paid an expenses entitlement that they can pocket for themselves? Answer: I deserve my money and… something about China?
Anyway, aside from watching two high-powered members of our major parties talk about how they wouldn’t bother with this serving-the-nation garbage if it wasn’t also a nice little earner, on the basis of this performance if paying more for politicians means getting better ones, maybe we should look into that.
At least, as long as we can cash our current ones in.