G’day.

We keep being told what a high standard of living we have. How we have had a ‘boom’ time, through selling minerals to China. How the ‘average’ wage has grown to $58k.

The median wage in this country is about $35k. That’s the figure exactly 50% of Australians make less than.

Meanwhile, our politicians are getting an extra $4,700 pa in their pay packets, in the form of an increase in an ‘allowance’. This allowance is now abut $32k, on top of the $127k plus they receive in wages, paid for by us.

These people are supposed to be our representatives. They have become so representative, they have to commission university studies, to find out what working class Aussies are thinking.

Does anyone else think their representatives are out of touch with real Australia?

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How much are they worth?

Have you heard the one about all pay rises must be linked to increases in productivity?

What do we pay our representatives for? How do we measure their productivity?

I would suggest we pay them to look after our best interests. In short, we pay them to find ways to improve the basic standard of living for ALL Australians; not just the privileged few. Since Malcolm Fraser declared: “Life wasn’t meant to be easy”, the gap between rich and poor -and politicians and their constituents- has grown monstrously, through successive governments of both persuasions.

And just as in Fraser’s day, when he said “we must all tighten our belts”, not long before granting all federal pollies a 9% pay rise, today, when we are facing the worst economic downturn in 70 years, our noble representatives are doing it again.

Incredibly, a few of our brilliant pollies have defended their pay rises with the claim that ” we have to offer big money, to attract the best talent”. This clearly indicates that all the existing politicians, who joined up before the pay rises, must be no talent bums who should immediately resign to make way for the new, talented pollies.

History indicates offering big money to politicians attracts people who are really interested in -and really good at- lining their own pockets.

If pay increases should be linked to productivity, how about this? Our representatives get a pay rise (dollar for dollar, NOT percentage) when the median wage rises.

In other words, we reward our representatives with a pay increase, when they manage to get us one.

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I quite liked this article in Ambit Gambit: Politics, Power and Pay.

I don’t think we can ask our pollies to do it for nothing, however…

These are the people who choose to send our children overseas, to places like Afghanistan and Iraq, to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country; their very lives.

What are our politicians prepared to sacrifice?

In Christian or Jesuan terms, how can our representatives ask our children to make such a sacrifice, if they themselves are not willing to do as much?

While our children sacrifice their lives overseas, our representatives stay home and discuss how much of a tax cut they should award themselves, or how much they can increase their bonuses by.

We have tried paying our politicians more (and more) and all it has achieved is better tax scales for the wealthy, and an increase in the gap between rich and poor.

Why not put them on a pension?

They will be in no danger of starving; they should still get travel allowances, and all the other allowances that are necessary for their job.

And if they find they still can’t live on the pension, then they will know how pensioners feel.

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