Tapu Misa: 'Market' has some funny ideas about people's worth

As long as we're obsessing about other people's salaries, and watching our credit card balances soaring into the stratosphere during another annual spend-up, it seems a good time to note that the country's highest-paid newsreader wasn't the only one in the hot-seat last week about the money she's earning.

Down in Porirua, my old stamping ground, a Samoan church minister, Popo Sua, was fending off a barrage of criticism at the $20,000 his parishioners had given him so he could take a three-month holiday in Samoa.

It wasn't his fault. He hadn't asked for the gift. It was his church elders who had asked the parishioners to cough up $500 for each family so they could reward the minister for his hard work.

Unfortunately, at least one parishioner resented the request and went to the media, claiming that many families had felt pressured to give and had been forced to take out loans to oblige.

It particularly grated with the parishioner that the minister owned four homes valued at around $750,000 while many of those being asked to fund his holiday owned none, and that the minister lived rent-free in a church house, paying neither phone nor electricity bills.

The elders defended their minister, saying the six-yearly holiday was pretty much a standard term of employment for ministers of the Congregational Christian Church of Samoa, and that they had to press Mr Sua to take the money (it being bad manners under Samoan custom to turn down gifts).

But as the Mana MP, Winnie Laban, told the Dominion Post, the church needed to re-evaluate the role of its leaders. Its role was about serving people in the community, not about putting stress on families. They had to stop this process of urging people to give all the time. Those families had to look after their children and their own interests first.

The $20,000 was, of course, just small change compared to the money being collected by Judy Bailey for her services. It's the market, we're told. And apparently the god of the marketplace dispenses her favours in a completely random fashion which we mere mortals can only pretend to understand.

That is why a newsreader can take home more than twice the Prime Minister's salary; why the captain of our cricket team can continue to collect half a million big ones no matter how many times his team crashes and burns; and why our nurses continue to look underpaid even after they get a 20 per cent pay rise.

According to the market, and the laws of supply and demand, there are more potential prime ministers in our midst than good newsreaders.

But don't get me wrong. I've always admired Bailey. She's calm, steady and refreshingly free of ego in an industry that seems to have more that its share of oversized ones. It takes nerve and a particular sense of entitlement to value yourself so highly.

I'd like to say that Bailey is worth every cent because she pulls in the viewers and the advertising dollars, but that's too simplistic.

I suspect that some people watch TVNZ news out of habit, and others because they like its more stolid and dependable feel compared with the younger, brasher competitor.

It helps to have the news delivered by someone who's likeable and easy on the eye, but overseas (and I suspect local) research shows that what people most want in a news service is authoritative, accurate news that they can trust. Besides, the expensive fiasco with John Hawkesby proved, I think, that New Zealanders value loyalty and fairness above so-called personalities.

The thing about the market is that it doesn't take much notice of what really motivates people. If it were money alone we would never get any teachers or nurses.

Somewhere in the mix is a combination of lifestyle, job satisfaction, service, a good working environment and a little, underrated thing called loyalty.

Loyalty cuts both ways, of course. Most people respond well to being appreciated and stroked, provided they're being adequately compensated, but in a market-driven economy, it's not hard to see why money would be the driving force. If you're seen solely as an expendable commodity rather than a valued member of a team, then you price yourself accordingly.

There's a happy medium to be struck, and I can't help feeling that it's not one TVNZ management seems to have found.

But I don't want to end my last column of the year on a negative note. This is Christmas, after all.

So, here's to Michelle, a reader who's been nagging me for weeks now for the address of the destitute Samoan family I featured in a column last year, just so she can send them Christmas presents. The children lost their mother to cancer, and had been going through hard times, with no help from their church and community.

And here's to the Fitiuta Congregational Christian Church in American Samoa, which last week handed out bags of money to the children at their Samoan pastor's school.

According to Samoa News, the money was the exact amount that each child had given to the church every Sunday; each offering had been faithfully recorded before being deposited in the bank. The amounts ranged from $400 to $4000 and last week the good Reverend Fa'avae Fa'ata'ita'i and his wife, Meafou, who also runs the church's after-school reading programme, played Mr and Mrs Santa and handed it all back.

Who says the church doesn't give back? Well, me - but this is one of those times when I'm happy to be wrong.