A Fair Price For Politicians

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday December 5, 2008

JOHN CONDE, the head of the Federal Government's Remuneration Tribunal has just dropped a hot issue into the Government's lap - what should be an appropriate salary for a federal minister or member of parliament. It seems timely, the day Mr Conde declared parliamentarians are underpaid and cabinet ministers earn about $100,000 a year less than the public service chiefs they supposedly direct, one MP appears to have been seeking to augment his salary by some freelance photography.

The tribunal is right from one angle. There used to be a rough relativity that cabinet ministers were paid about the same as department heads. But in recent years the public service has gone in for performance bonuses, fixed-term contracts, lateral recruitment and market-competitive salaries to make sure it has mandarins with capacity and experience to match private-sector chiefs. Consequently the top packages are heading for double the $219,179 received by a minister. Mr Conde argues that politics will increasingly struggle to find candidates of high abilities if this disparity remains or even widens further.

This argument can be taken to absurd lengths. It already has in Singapore, where ministerial salaries are set at two-thirds of the median salary of the top eight earners in the professions of accounting, law, banking, engineering, multinational companies and local manufacturers. Consequently, its ministers get about $1.9 million a year and its Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, about $3.1 million, which is several times the salary of, say, the US President, George Bush. It's supposed to attract the best and keep them honest.

The former Liberal health minister Tony Abbott looks from the other angle. Ministers may be underpaid, given the complexity, hours and responsibility of their work, but politics is a vocation, not a profession. Indeed, Mr Conde's argument could equally be applied to teachers or policemen but it isn't very often. Would better pay actually attract better people to politics, as is often asserted? Candidates would still have to immerse themselves in the labyrinthine and sometimes grubby processes of preselection, in this state pleasing party numbers men like Labor's Joe Tripodi or the Liberals' David Clarke, or stacking branches with the right number of drinkers from the local leagues club or Maronite grannies.

More money will not necessarily attract better candidates, but MPs and ministers probably deserve a good increase after a year's freeze. It's never a good time for it, but now, when Canberra is funnelling out money, is probably as good as any.