The Kiwis got it right on Ministers & MPs pay

​http://tvnz.co.nz/politics-news/key-not-keen-payrise-mps-5656316

Key not keen on payrise for MPs

Published: 12:44PM Tuesday October 22, 2013 Source: Fairfax

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  Prime Minister John Key speaking to ONE News. - Source: ONE News
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Prime Minister John Key does not have a problem with state chief executives getting paid more than the ministers they report to, and he does not believe the independent pay-setting body should try and close the gap.
The Remuneration Authority is currently consulting over the size of any pay rise for MPs this year, and Key has said he would prefer it if MPs received no extra cash.
''I don't think they deserve any special treatment. I certainly don't think they deserve anything above the inflation rate and I don't think there's an argument that can be put together that's coherent that they could," he said.
Key earned considerably more in the private than public sector, but money was not the motivating factor for MPs.
''If they came in for the money I strongly suggest they are looking in the wrong place."
He said if the authority did have to recommend an increase, the ''best case scenario'' would be the inflation rate.
He said the argument about ministers' pay rates was that the Secretary of Treasury earned more than the Minister of Finance.
"Well, yes, but that's always been the case and maybe their pay rises have always been bigger. If the argument is to close the gap then I think we are heading in the wrong place."
Treasury secretary Gabriel Makhlouf's salary is between $540,000 and $550,000 while a minister is paid a base rate of $257,800. However as Deputy Prime Minister Bill English receives $291,800.
Authority chairman John Errington would not disclose what the authority was proposing, but indicated it was looking at the widening pay gap between MPs and the public sector.
The authority set a "payline" and that varied, depending on the job.
"The payline has certainly gone up this year on average by more than the consumer price index. All our information is indicating that the public sector is going ahead faster than members of parliament remuneration."
The authority took into account fairness to the taxpayer and the individual as well as adverse economic conditions.
Key has also criticised the authority for typically announcing MPs pay rises just before Christmas.
Errington said the authority got its decision out as soon as possible.
''We would hope to get it out well before the last week before Christmas this time.''
But it needed to gather all the necessary information including on MPs' travel entitlements, which it uses to adjust their pay.
Information on their travel was now at hand, he said.
Despite Key's public stance, Labour leader David Cunliffe refused to express a view on MPs' pay.
"That's a matter for the Remuneration Authority, it's been deliberately taken out of political hands and I think that's appropriate.... it's not a matter for me to have an opinion on."
Key was playing "cheap politics" by saying MPs did not deserve one.
"Because he's saying what he thinks the public wants to hear even though he is in agreement with the new process which was to take the matter out of the hands of politicians.''
But Labour MP Clare Curran said she believed all MPs, from all parties, worked hard, but she did not believe a pay rise was a good idea.
''In line with the wage rises that ordinary people aren't getting, this year I think it would be counter-productive for MPs to be getting a pay rise this year.
Her colleague Shane Jones said the current system used to evaluate MPs was the right one. He had earned more in the private sector but this was irrelevant to how much he was paid.
''You don't come into [being an] MP because of a profit and loss statement, you come in because of a mission, and it's a vocation."


No wonder Sam is in NZ.

NZ politicians are grossly underpaid. They are paid peanuts and we have a bunch of monkeys running the country as a result.

Leongsam said:

NZ politicians are grossly underpaid. They are paid peanuts and we have a bunch of monkeys running the country as a result.

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There is a rationale behind paying the executive branch of government well. There is a lot of corruption that goes on in America because you have senior government officials, they meet lobbyists from rich corporations. The rich corporations say to them, "make this statute into law for me", and he does exactly that. Five years later, the senior government official has left the government and he's joined that rich corporation, and he's earning millions of dollars. The public does not have the time and energy to track everything that is going on. But they know that America is a country which serves its big corporations very well.

So we do know that the pay differential between the public and private sectors are a Very Bad Thing. So paying our ministers well in Singapore was presumably to prevent this rubbish from going on.

However we have another problem. A lot of our ministers do serve the government for a very long time (which is - not exactly good but still far superior to serving for a few years and going to the private sector. There is a cosy relationship between some corporations and the government, and that is not good but still better than the real private sector and the government having a cosy relationship, because at least in Singapore, you know which companies are supposed to have links to the government and you can watch them more closely.

So the Singapore situation is that we have kept a lid on this problem to a limited extent. We haven't exactly prevented the unfettered collusion between the government and the private sector but we have limited it.

But we're also wondering if it's worth the high price that we pay.

There seems to be more corruption cases among the top ranks of civil servants, MPs and Minsiters even after they got astronomical pay.

This to me is endemic compared to the years 1959-1990.

metalmickey said:

There is a rationale behind paying the executive branch of government well. There is a lot of corruption that goes ..

But we're also wondering if it's worth the high price that we pay.

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Nevertheless NZ is still considered as an advanced country with a high happiness index, low Gini coefficient, and a working system. Otherwise you wont be there for so long.

Leongsam said:

NZ politicians are grossly underpaid. They are paid peanuts and we have a bunch of monkeys running the country as a result.

Click to expand...

kingrant said:

Nevertheless NZ is still considered as an advanced country with a high happiness index, low Gini coefficient, and a working system. Otherwise you wont be there for so long.

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The Kiwis are happy because they aren't that concerned about the trappings of wealth. Any old car will do.

They like fishing and they're happy when the all blacks win.

kingrant said:

There seems to be more corruption cases among the top ranks of civil servants, MPs and Minsiters even after they got astronomical pay.

This to me is endemic compared to the years 1959-1990.

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I don't really know if you can make a comparison like that. And after all the civil service is larger than it was 20 years ago when our population was still under 3 million. We haven't had any ministers committing suicide after being accused for graft in the last 20 years?

What we are looking at, and all the cases that have gone to court, are cases of egregious corrruption, of the type that can be tried under the law and people can be sent to jail for it. But what about other more subtle forms of corruption? You amend a law as an MP and then I hire you at a very good pay. You make plenty of pro-business and anti-labour legislation and I give you a nice cushy directorship. Or I own plenty of property in Singapore, and I make plenty of decisions that favour the property market go through the roof. Or I, from the MAS or CPIB or MOM close one eye to all the abuses of authority that take place within a private firm in Singapore.

Because only the corruption that is very blatant, and where you can leave a paper trail and where the "gift" is obvious will make the news. Other things where it's just "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" will harm people but you can't prove that it's corruption. Even stuff like favourable judgements in important court cases, or the ability of DAs to frame prosecutions however they want. I still remember that there were some children of rich and powerful people accused of smuggling cocaine in Singapore, they escaped the gallows because they found 14.99g of cocaine.

I haven't seen anything that convinces me that the high pay either helps or hurts the level of corruption in Singapore.

Leongsam said:

The Kiwis are happy because they aren't that concerned about the trappings of wealth. Any old car will do.

They like fishing and they're happy when the all blacks win.

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It's true that nobody who gives a shit about the rest of civilisation would ever move to NZ. But considering the amount that you have to pay for a decent sized house, or a car, or decent living conditions, and you'd understand why "economic progress" is not so important to NZ. As long as you're above the poverty line and not some drunk Maori.

NZ - unfortunately I don't know the details since I've only been there once as a kid - apparently was a place where there was a great economic liberalisation and privatisation going on in the 80s, a more extreme version of what Thatcher put the UK through. And the welfare state was quickly dismantled, and the suicide rate suddenly became the highest in the world. I've read this from John Gray's "False Dawn". Anybody want to expound on this?

Quantum politics-Find them in Singapore,Malaysia
Posted on April 2, 2012 | 2 Comments
There’s a delightful article in Saturday’s New York Times – A Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney. OK – it’s about the US Presidential election but I am sure we could find local politicians whose behaviour could be more in line with a quantum political theory than classical political theory.

The NYT introduces the concept this way:

“Before Mitt Romney, those seeking the presidency operated under the laws of so-called classical politics, laws still followed by traditional campaigners like Newt Gingrich. Under these Newtonian principles, a candidate’s position on an issue tends to stay at rest until an outside force — the Tea Party, say, or a six-figure credit line at Tiffany — compels him to alter his stance, at a speed commensurate with the size of the force (usually large) and in inverse proportion to the depth of his beliefs (invariably negligible). This alteration, framed as a positive by the candidate, then provokes an equal but opposite reaction among his rivals.
http://openparachute.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/quantum-politics/

metalmickey said:

NZ - unfortunately I don't know the details since I've only been there once as a kid - apparently was a place where there was a great economic liberalisation and privatisation going on in the 80s, a more extreme version of what Thatcher put the UK through. And the welfare state was quickly dismantled, and the suicide rate suddenly became the highest in the world. I've read this from John Gray's "False Dawn". Anybody want to expound on this?

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Before the introduction of Rogernomics, the NZ economy had more rules than a Commie state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogernomics

Roger Douglas dismantled the archaic setup and introduced free market policies. It had to be done or the country would have gone broke. Welfare was not dismantled though. It was merely restructured.

Many could not adjust to the new reality as they were spoilt silly after living in the land of Milk and Honey. I'm sure some committed suicide.

The current suicide rate has nothing to do with poverty. It's caused by mainly by addictions and rural isolation. While overcrowding creates stress, so too does living in a town where there are only 50 people.

Call it what you want, but let's stick to what you called the egregious type. Acc to the high pay theory, the more you are paid, the lower should be the appetite for corruption. Yet, in the 1960s/70s, when the Minsiterial pay was peanuts, we only had a case once in a while. But look at the recent cases - Ng Boon Gay, Peter Lim, that MFA fella etc. all within a year I say, and all were supposed to be well remunerated and less attracted to corruption.

Didnt that say something that higher pay did not kill off the appetite for corruption? Even worse is the entitlement mentality that goes with being a top civil servant - that you expect to be paid exorbitantly even before you show results.

metalmickey said:

I don't really know if you can make a comparison like that. And after all the civil service is larger than it was 20 years ago when our population was still under 3 million. We haven't had any ministers committing suicide after being accused for graft in the last 20 years?

What we are looking at, and all the cases that have gone to court, are cases of egregious corrruption,

I haven't seen anything that convinces me that the high pay either helps or hurts the level of corruption in Singapore.

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Which part of what I said are you disagreeing with?

The three cases within a year is something you need to take with a pinch of salt. There is a time for everything. Stuff had been going on for years, and they had been tracking these things for years. Isn't it a coincidence that right after the elections, especially an elections where the electorate delivered a rebuke, so many corruption cases were brought to light? Normally they would have been settled between 2009 and 2011, but they waited until after 2011 because of the GE.

Similarly I'm sure that the SMRT people knew that the way that the MRT was being run, it would have caused big problems. But they couldn't shut down stations and make repairs. They had to wear the system down until it gave up - at least until 2011, they had to paper over all the cracks.

The part I disagreed I already placed in quotation marks. Simply comparing number of corruption cases after 1990 (when the high Min salary was adopted) and the years before. I take every thing at face value. All the 3 cases in anycase occurred after 1990, so give or take a few years does not derail my assertion that high pay did not deter corruption appetite.

Not sure what's yr point?

The part I disagreed I already placed in quotation marks. Simply comparing number of corruption cases after 1990 (when the high Min salary was adopted) and the years before. I take every thing at face value. All the 3 cases in anycase occurred after 1990, so give or take a few years does not derail my assertion that high pay did not deter corruption appetite.

Not sure what's yr point in disagreeing with me?

Leongsam said:

NZ politicians are grossly underpaid. They are paid peanuts and we have a bunch of monkeys running the country as a result.

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Your bunch of monkeys are better than our bunch of greedy monkeys.

Leongsam said:

The Kiwis are happy because they aren't that concerned about the trappings of wealth. Any old car will do.

They like fishing and they're happy when the all blacks win.

Click to expand...

Isn't that what life is all about? Be happy. You don't need loads of money to make you happy.

kingrant said:

The part I disagreed I already placed in quotation marks. Simply comparing number of corruption cases after 1990 (when the high Min salary was adopted) and the years before. I take every thing at face value. All the 3 cases in anycase occurred after 1990, so give or take a few years does not derail my assertion that high pay did not deter corruption appetite.

Not sure what's yr point?

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So which part of "I haven't seen anything that convinces me that the high pay either helps or hurts the level of corruption in Singapore." do you not agree with?

winnipegjets said:

Isn't that what life is all about? Be happy. You don't need loads of money to make you happy.

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That's my philosophy. No fancy cars for me. My 14 year old Toyota still does the job.

The only thing I indulge in is my cameras.

Leongsam said:

That's my philosophy. No fancy cars for me. My 14 year old Toyota still does the job.

The only thing I indulge in is my cameras.

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Do you have 1 million miles on that Toyota?

winnipegjets said:

Do you have 1 million miles on that Toyota?

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No only 400,000km. Engine and gearbox has not been touched besides regular servicing.