[BITList] EVERY AUSTRALIAN VOTER MUST READ THIS
FA
franka at iinet.net.au
Wed Mar 21 10:50:47 GMT 2018
A longish read, but worth the effort
*/Adam Creighton is an award-winning economics journalist with a special
interest in tax and financial policy. He spent most of 2016 at the Wall
Street Journal in Washington DC. He won the Citi Journalism Award for
Excellence in 2015, and was runner up in the internationally recognised
Bastiat Prize for Journalism in 2014. He started his career at the
Reserve Bank of Australia and studied economics at Oxford, where he was
a Commonwealth Scholar. /*
*-****why politicians strive to stay in power to keep their noses in
the pay trough, you need to read this.*
*If this is not of concern to every taxpayer, then you
deserve to suffer the everyday services you are not
getting because of this obscene waste on money.*
*This needs to be on your mind next time you vote!*
*An important article. this is why we need a reduced
size in the government...It is just one big gravy train.*
**
**
*Perhaps the government wouldn’t need to crack down on
sexual relations between politicians and their staff if
there weren’t so many well-kept staff. The Barnaby Joyce
saga has awkwardly revealed how the number and pay of
political staff is out of control.*
*Vikki Campion was just one of 155 senior political
advisers employed by the Turnbull government last year.
Surprised journalists reported her salary of “up to
$191,000” for her digital and social media strategy
role. That’s actually a considerable understatement.*
**
*Such advisers receive a “private-plated vehicle”
allowance of $24,600 and “parliamentary staff allowance”
of $31,600 too. So the correct figure for senior
advisers is a salary of up to $247,000 a year, excluding
travel allowance of course, which for a
non-Canberra-based adviser is about $18,000 (untaxed).
Then there’s 15.4 per cent superannuation.*
*The opposition and Greens have about 26 senior advisers
as well, suggesting taxpayers have to pony up about $45
million a year for senior political advice alone. It’s
the tip of the iceberg. All up there are about 540
advisers spread across the government (442), opposition
(95), and other minor parties. These higher paid roles
(all six figures) come on top of the four electorate
staff each MP and senator receives.*
*In 2000 the Howard government had 345 advisers,
according to the Parliamentary Library, suggesting
growth of about 30 per cent. Australian federal
politicians had no staff until 1944, when they were
allowed a typist. Crossbenchers get advisers now. Last
year they each enjoyed three on top of their electorate
staff.*
**
*Salaries aren’t the whole story, of course./The
Australian/reported last year that airfares, taxis and
untaxed “travel allowance” for the Prime Minister’s
50-odd ministerial staff exceeded $2.13m last financial
year or $5840 a day, about 87 per cent higher than Tony
Abbott’s staff spent two years earlier. The same
documents obtained under freedom-of-information laws
also showed the travel costs of the Opposition Leader’s
35-strong team had increased by 66 per cent to $2.34m,
or $6420 a day, over the same period.*
**
*Cost isn’t a big theme in Canberra, where even the
taxis double the fare if they are carrying two or more
passengers. And why not? As if anyone is using their own
money.*
*In 2013, the last year the government published the
aggregate figures, the total cost for advisers and
electorate staff came to $230m. Back-of-the-envelope
calculations suggest it’s above $300m./The
Australian/has repeatedly tried to obtain the latest
figures.*
**
*Similar problems emerge in state governments,
egregiously in South Australia, where Premier Jay
Weatherill had more than 43 full-time personal staff
(not far off the PM), according to the government
gazette, including 17 media advisers earning between
$115,000 and $157,000 a year.*
**
*Ministers and politicians clearly need staff, and quite
a few more than a generation ago, given the demands of
media. But the question has to be asked whether the
numbers and pay have become excessive, and potentially
corrosive. If the pay is so good, why risk prosecuting
change in the public interest? The highest priority
becomes keeping one’s job.*
*Even ministers’ receptionists now earn up to $100,000
In political la-la land that’s considered a low salary,
but it also happens to be 40 per cent higher than median
full-time earnings in Australia. British and US
political advisers are routinely shocked by the
remarkably plush conditions of Australia’s political class.*
**
*In Britain only a handful of advisers earns more than
100,000 pounds a year, and there are far fewer of them.
The British government employed 82 “special advisers”
(32 in Prime Minister Theresa May’s office) in 2016;
cabinet ministers were allowed a maximum of two. Cabinet
ministers in Australia have between 12 and 20 each.*
*Some allowance needs to be made for the greater
proximity of ministers to their departments in Britain.
As/Yes, Minister/viewers well know, Sir Humphrey Appleby
was just down the hall. In Canberra, ministers have
their offices in the parliament, far away from their
public servants down the hill.*
*Even so, it’s not clear the quantum spent on political
advice would pass a cost-benefit test. The federal
government has more than 150,000 public servants, some
of whom are on eye-popping pay deals, to administer
policy and provide advice.*
*We’ll never know how much worse the Nationals’ social
and digital media strategy would have been without
Campion’s efforts. But even if it were substantially
worse, should taxpayers be paying for this anyway? To
the extent many staffers are politicians in waiting
(just look at the career history of so many MPs), the
public is forced to pay costs that should really be
borne by political parties themselves.*
*No one doubts many staff work long hours (I know, I
used to be one), but that doesn’t mean the work has to
be done in the first place, or paid for by taxpayers.
The fact roles can be created, abolished and shifted so
easily, as was Campion’s, should be a red flag in any
audit.*
*Nothing much is likely to change. Politicians are
reluctant to talk about this because both sides benefit
so much. The real power of politicians, after all, is
the power of appointment. The more appointments, the
more power.*
*But there are some obvious places to make savings, and
boost the public’s respect for the political class. For
instance, must staff (and politicians) fly business
class for the short flights between Sydney, Melbourne
and Canberra? Or why not run a bus between Canberra
airport and the parliament, saving many millions a year
in taxi fares? The absurdity of separate vehicles and
“parliamentary” allowances should be incorporated into
salaries to make pay scales clearer.*
*A future government should also make a hard decision
about whether having political advisers in their 20s
earning more than some GPs is in line with community
standards.*
Adam Creighton
<https://www.theaustralian.com.au/author/Adam+Creighton>
**
*I suggest you distribute this as widely as you can.
It's true and it's appalling.*
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