I know a bloke who drives trucks for a living. Come to think of it, I know a quite a few blokes who drive trucks for a living. This particular bloke taught me a valuable lesson.

He’s only a young fella. He’s got a young wife, two young kids, a house, a mortgage, a shiny four wheel drive; he wants the best for his family. He wants to ‘get ahead’.

So he took on a job deep in the Outback miles to buggery from nowhere. He makes good money; over a hundred grand a year.

But he still wants more.

On his travels around whoop whoop he stumbled across some blackfella artists, creating big canvases of traditional themes. He did a bit of research, checked out some galleries and tourist dives, and discovered they sold this stuff for up to 10 or 12 grand a pop. One bloke told him he’d give him 3 or 4 grand a canvas, on the spot.

So he went back to the blackfellas, and offered them $300. for each canvas. After a little bit of haggling, they took the money.

As he said: “no one’s really being ripped off. To them, 300 bucks is a lot of money.”

Now what does that mean, exactly? Can you buy more, with $300 out there, than you can closer to the coast? Doubtful. It seems more likely the 300 bucks was a lot of money to ‘them’ because they had very little money, and therefore needed it more. If they had money, they wouldn’t have needed money so much, so he would have had to give them more money.

That’s breakfast cereal logic.

Now I find that total lack of morality (not to mention the prejudice involved) a little disturbing.

I’d like to think the two contenders in the recent election for the top job in this country, John Howard and Kevin Rudd, would also be disturbed by this story.

But obviously, neither of them would be.

Both pollies are in the top tax bracket of more than 180 grand a year. the PM currently gets around 330 grand a year, plus lurks and perks.

Both pollies think they are paying too much tax, but the workers’ mate Kevin was prepared to put off his tax cut for another year. (not give it up, just put it off).

We’re talking about roughly an extra hundred bucks a week in their pockets, by the way.

What sort of tax cut are they offering the battlers? About 10 or 15 bucks.

After all, that’s a lot of money, to ‘them’.

Isn’t this what capitalism is all about? Buy as cheap as you can, and sell as dear as you can.

This presents a problem. On the one hand, you want to pay the producers of goods as little as possible, to keep products affordable. On the other hand, you need highly paid consumers with plenty of money in their pockets.

Several companies, like Blundstone most recently, moved their production overseas; got ‘them’ to produce the goods, in other words; after all, to ‘them’ a smaller wage is still a lot of money.

Perhaps they are the more honest ones.

Once again we are falling into a two class system; producers and consumers. We are once more sinking into a world where those who produce, create or manufacture products, cannot afford to buy the goods they produce.

Perhaps the greatest -unsung- strength of the Westminster system of government is the division between the popularly elected representatives, and the public service.

The theory used to be, that representatives did not have to be lawyers, economists, business administrators or accountants. They could be carpenters, plumbers, shop owners and workers. Their most important attribute should have been simply that they were ‘average’.

They were representative.

Unfortunately, the most recent, and glaring example of this kind of representative was Pauline Hanson; but witness how quite remarkably popular she became; I would suggest in many cases despite, rather than because of some very dodgy policies (which the Liberal party were happy to adopt/steal).

The role of the representative was to formulate policy, based on the wishes of their constituents. Implementing that policy was the job of permanent public servants; the dreaded “Sir Humphrey Appleby”s. These public servants were supposed to be well educated, highly trained and experienced in their portfolios.

And as such, very well paid.

I would suggest the rot began with Malcolm Fraser, and his infamous “life wasn’t meant to be easy”. Only a few days after he told the producers (workers) in this country they had to tighten their belts, parliamentarians awarded themselves a hefty (was it 9%?) pay rise.

Currently, our politicians are in the top 5%, highest paid wage and salary earners.

Remember, our current PM, the ‘honourable’ church going Christian Kevin Rudd, “shocked and revolted” by looters in flood ravaged Emerald, earns more than $300,000. a year, plus expenses.

His wife is a millionaire in her own right. Clearly, Kevin’s church doesn’t dwell too much on Matthew 19:16-21, or Matthew 7:24. These politicians have become so non representative, they have to commission studies, to find out what ordinary Australians are suffering. We give these politicians the power to send our children to war. They expect our children to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country; their very lives.

And what are the pollies prepared to sacrifice?

Well, Kevin Rudd did nobly sacrifice that scheduled tax break for top earners such as himself. For twelve months.

We accept so many things, simply because, as the cow in the movie ‘Babe’ put it: “the way things are, is the way things are.”

Where is the justification? How do politicians justify pay rises as a percentage of their already excessive, non representative wages, rather than on a dollar for dollar basis? How do they justify their wages at all?

The classic justification was, “We need to offer more money, to attract the best talent”.

Does that not mean all the current crop of pollies, who were attracted by less money, are no talent bums who should resign immediately to make way for these talented people? What does that tell us about the likes of John Howard, who was in parliament for around thirty years, when parliamentarians’ salaries were considerably lower?

I don’t think we need worry about J curves, bell curves, fiscal or monetary policy to get a fairer go for the producers (workers) of this country.

If our self serving pollies were restricted to only getting more money -on a dollar for dollar basis- when the basic or median wage went up, we would see some very rapid changes.The remarkable thing is, in a democratic country, we (the majority) are letting them (the very small minority) get away with it.

Why?

If you can explain this to me, or have anything to add, please do.