ACT Chief Minister Kate Carnell has put a submission to the Remuneration Tribunal that the Chief Minister and other MLAs should not get a pay rise. There is some irony in the submission. Out of all the 17 MLAs she is about the only one who could cut the mustard in the private sector and get more outside the Assembly than she gets inside.
Pay for Assembly Members presents a conundrum. If you pay peanuts you might get monkeys. If you get monkeys, the public does not want to pay them cashews, arguing that they deserve only peanuts. On the other hand, the payment for MLAs and quality of MLAs may not correlate. Good-quality people may have made enough money outside politics not to worry much about pay; their central concerns being public service, power, influence and other non-monetary concerns. Other good-quality people may not be very affluent and still not worry much about pay, regarding the rewards of public service enough – a good example of that is Sir William Deane, who upon being made Governor-General insisted on a pay reduction for the office. Adding to the difficulty is the possibility that if you make the pay rate higher it will attract people for the sake of the money not for the sake of doing a good job.
Continue reading “1999_04_april_leader16apr mlas pay”