Politicians’ pay rise was in poor taste - Heather du Plessis-Allan

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon speaking to media on his way into the National caucus, Parliament, Wellington, 30 April, 2024. Photo / Mark Mitchell

OPINION

The politicians should not have taken the pay rise.

They say they didn’t have a choice. That’s bollocks. Jacinda Ardern rejected the pay rise offered in 2018 by simply writing a law to stop it.

Christopher Luxon could have done that but he chose not to.

He’s deftly inoculated himself by promising to donate his $50,000 pay bump to charity. We’re just going to have to take his word he’s doing that, given he’s probably not going to publish proof every year. But he hasn’t inoculated anyone else in his Government.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis, who’s ordering the cuts into the public sector, isn’t inoculated. Act minister David Seymour, who’s planning to cut spending on the food in schools programme, isn’t either. Nor is Police Minister Mark Mitchell, who’s defended a disappointing pay offer to police officers.

They’re all getting a nice $31,000 pay bump.

It’s fair to argue that MPs should be paid more than the $163,000-odd a backbencher gets. If they’re good, they work very hard for the money they earn. They spend multiple nights a week away from their families, work late into the night on the days Parliament sits, turn up to events at weekends, deal with endless constituency complaints. It’s a grind.

In the private sector, the most competent among them would earn much more.

But most of us should be paid more than we are. Especially the police. These people sometimes risk their lives for $83,000 a year - around half a backbencher’s pay. And yet they’re being told the country’s too broke to even pay them enough to keep up with inflation. Let’s be clear what that means. The country’s so broke, we’re told, the police are being asked to take a pay cut in real terms.

The country’s so broke that some specialist doctors are reportedly being asked to take a 12 per cent pay cut so the health system can balance its budget.

The country’s so broke that more than 3000-and-counting public servants have been fired.

Now I agree with downsizing the public service, but I still think this is a pretty rough story to tell those Kiwis: that the country is so broke they need to lose their jobs but still somehow has enough money to bump up the pay of politicians by tens of thousands of dollars.

It doesn’t sound like a lot. Over four years 10.5 per cent works out at 2.6 per cent a year on average. But that is a pay bump of $18,000 for the most junior of MPs and much more for ministers. Try convincing a police officer that $18,000 is not a lot when it takes them nearly three months to earn that much.

This is really not an argument about whether the pay rise is deserved or not. Most pay rises are. It’s an argument about leadership.

Leaders understand that you must be prepared to do what you ask of others. If you’re asking public servants to lose 100 per cent of their pay and if you’re asking police officers to take a smaller pay offer than they got last year and if you’re asking doctors to earn less to help the country, then so should you.

The coalition Government will probably not get the criticism it deserves for this self-serving decision because every other party in government is as hungry for the dollars as they are. They appear to have all banded together in their silence. The police won’t make a song and dance because their pay dispute has gone to arbitration so the public mud-slinging is over. The union for public servants is not taking potshots either because - I’d guess - some of them want to be politicians themselves and it won’t help if they attack the gang they want to join.

But the news will have left an impression with plenty of people. A lot of police have described this as a kick in the guts.

And it has exposed the fib of how broke the country really is. It’s broke enough to cause others pain but not broke enough to cause politicians pain