Why, when the government is laying off thousands of workers, do we continue to pay MPs like Melissa Lee and Penny Simmonds a quarter of a million dollars a year each?
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon got it right by stripping Lee of the media and communications portfolio and Simmonds of disability issues. They simply weren’t up to the respective jobs.
Lee, in Cabinet with responsibility for an industry rapidly going down the gurgler, appeared to have no idea what to do or say. When she did try, it was as if she didn’t understand the issues at all, had no plan she could sell Parliamentary colleagues on, and was out of touch. Asked about Newshub’s demise, she noted there were other options like Sky. If Lee had visited Newshub, she might have learned it also put out Sky’s news.
Simmonds stunned the country when her (former) ministry appeared to announce the scrapping of support payments for disabled Kiwis and their carers. Having upset one of the most vulnerable groups in society and her fellow MPs, she said communications around the change had been bungled. Whatever, it was enough to require the ministry to have any funding decisions signed off by cabinet.
In Simmonds’ case you might be able to blame inexperience; she’s only been an MP since 2020, but Lee has been in Parliament for 16 years and is National’s third-longest-serving MP. After 16 years, she finally got a job with some real responsibility – which comes with staff, a bigger budget, an expectation she would and could do something, and scrutiny – but simultaneously froze and failed.
She appeared woefully ill-prepared and was found out.
Nowhere to hide
Ministers can’t run and hide from Ministerial responsibility. That’s the first and last rule. And Ministers get few second chances to embarrass their party.
Parliament is full of bland, unexciting, complete bores; journeymen and women and some people who simply haven’t got the capacity to work at a higher level solving complex issues and passing laws that overhaul and change the face of entire sectors.
To be effective requires a certain kind of talent and skill. Lee and Simmonds were promoted above what they were actually capable of and their leader, along with the rest of us, knew it so acted sooner rather than later. They’ve been held accountable by the boss for a lack of performance, which is slightly refreshing given how much ministers in the previous government got away with.
But why do we continue to pay underperforming ministers so much? There’s talk of performance-related pay for, say, teachers, so why not MPs?
As the longer serving of the two, Lee’s performance suggested to me that she had not done the work in opposition to understand what market conditions were in play for the media, what employers were most worried about, and how the future truly looked for our leading media businesses.
It riles me to think Lee had six years in opposition to prepare for her ministerial role, but she looks to have squandered it. I’m not suggesting she should have “bought” a TV news programme or even funded it, but she could have used state resources to bring players together to see if anything could be brokered. This government seems to be keen on “fast tracking” laws, so perhaps she could have “fast tracked” an arrangement that required the big-tech players to pay for the content they take – steal – from our media outlets.
The government has to be at the top table going into bat for NZ Inc. That’s what we expect of our representatives. Get interested and involved. Instead, we got a vacant, clueless and sneering bunch of words from Lee, who largely played spectator, said nothing and meant even less.
As for Simmonds, once again, we appeared to have a person in charge who didn’t understand the issues at all.
Value for money?
But despite their demotions, we’re still paying them nearly a quarter of a million dollars each. Simmonds holds an electorate seat (Invercargill) while Lee is a list MP who’s never won a seat despite standing for Mt Albert in successive elections. But National has consistently placed Lee high on its party list, so the party’s boffins, influencers and past leaders clearly consider her to be capable -- hence that high list ranking.
This raises another point, especially pertinent in this cost-of-living crisis where thousands of public servants are losing their jobs. We have too many list MPs. I’d cut 20 of them immediately in the spirit of public sector cuts. Why should Parliament be immune to cuts? You’ll miss none of them; in fact, I doubt you could name more than just a few.
They need to prove their worth – and that goes well beyond their hefty salaries. In the 16 years Lee has been in Parliament, taxpayers have paid her an annual salary which, if you add it all up on the back of an envelope, is in excess of $2.5 million in wages alone. It costs about $500,000 a year to pay, fly, accommodate and provide staff for each MP, so add that to the equation and Lee has cost us an additional $8m since 2008.
Are we getting value for money? I don’t believe we are. It seems to me that $8m is an eye-watering sum for someone who clearly didn’t use her years wisely in opposition and prepare herself for the challenges of government. One news outlet may have been “saved”, in a stripped-down form, but hundreds of professionals in the sector Lee was supposed to be responsible for are going to lose their jobs in a few months.
She can take no credit for that save, but I’d argue she can share the responsibility for the job losses.
And, I guess, she just did this week. Sort of.
