Well, the cat's well and truly out of the bag. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian didn't want to offend any of her mates sitting on her side of the parliament so she decided to give every Coalition MP a salary increase.
That's enough to suggest a young Gladys always invited every student in her class at school to her birthday parties. That way no one was left off the invitation list so no one could possibly get offended. And, it also just happened to mean more birthday presents for young Gladys.
Fast forward to 2019. Every Coalition MP will have Gladys on their Christmas card list and she can expect to be on the receiving end of heaps and heaps of Chrissie presents.
Wednesday's Sydney Morning Herald's front page said it all.
"NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian is rewarding every
Coalition MP with promotions that deliver salary increases of between $10,000
and $110,000 a year on top of their base wage.
Seven fewer Coalition MPs in
Parliament after the last election means the Premier has appointed all 65
Coalition MPs as ministers, parliamentary secretaries, committee chairs or to
other parliamentary roles. They will all receive position payments and expense
allowances for these roles on top of their $165,000 base salary.
Fifteen backbenchers,
including eight new MPs, will each lead a parliamentary committee given the
task of reviewing proposed laws and scrutinising public sector performance,
earning them up to an extra $20,600 a year.
The Nationals MP for Coffs Harbour
, Gurmesh Singh, is one of the new MPs and has been appointed chair of the
healthcare complaints commission committee.
Mr Singh said there was a “steep
learning curve” in Parliament but promised to give his all to the committee ,
which has in the past reviewed complaints against medical practitioners, the
cosmetic health service and unregistered doctors.
“Health hasn’t been an area
of specialty of mine, but obviously I’ll throw 100 per cent of my effort behind
it,” he said.
...
Interim opposition leader Penny Sharpe said the
government’s move to hand additional pay to every MP while making cuts to the
public service was paradoxical. “While workers in
NSW are suffering from record low wage growth, insecure work and the loss of
jobs, the arrogance of the Premier to doll [sic] out sneaky pay rises to her MPs is
shameful,” she said.
After her March election victory, Ms Berejiklian increased
the number of ministers and parliamentary secretaries . She appointed 18 MPs
parliamentary secretaries , who each receive at least an additional $21,000
each year. At the same time, she expanded her ministry by one to 24 members.
Ministers earn an extra $94,000 to $110,000 in salary and can claim up to
$42,000 in expenses . The most a senior minister can earn including expenses is
$318,000 per year.
Another eight Coalition MPs earn above their base salaries
for parliamentary roles, which occur in every government, including the speaker
($94,000 extra), whips ($21,000) and their deputies.
...
During the election campaign, Ms Berejiklian
attacked a proposal by Labor to scrap the public sector wage cap – which
freezes pay rises for over 390,000 public servants at 2.5 per cent – calling it
a ‘‘ pay rise for middle managers’ ’ and ‘‘ economic vandalism’’ . Following
the election, the Department of Premier and Cabinet forked out $2.3 million on
redundancy payouts for 69 political staffers who did not continue on in the new
government, according to figures obtained under freedom of information laws. A
government spokesman said that every Coalition MP was “working hard for their
community and for the entire state” and called the Labor Party “lazy” . “While
the Liberals and Nationals government is working hard to deliver unprecedented
investment in schools and hospitals, Labor has been leaderless for 93 days –
all because they put the interests of Bill Shorten ahead of NSW,” the spokesman
said."
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday, June 26, 2019, pages 1 and 10
