liberation

Excuses for ministerial misspending: [5] ‘Journalists are just as bad’

‘Blame the messenger’ – that’s the approach of some politicians caught up in the recent ministerial credit card scandal. The defence of those politicians that have been caught misusing their credit cards has too often revolved around some sort of suggestion that political journalists are probably ‘just as bad’ in misusing their employers resources. This blog post outlines some of the criticisms made of political journalists recently over the scandal, and suggests that although journalists should indeed be subject to scrutiny about how well they perform in their role, such attacks on them are merely unacceptable and desperate attempts to evade political responsibility. [Read more below]

Is the New Zealand prime minister paid too much?

Is the New Zealand prime minister paid too much? I think so, and so do voters. But another way to ascertain whether they get too much is to compare their salary with that paid in other democracies. A recent Economist magazine has attempted to compare the remuneration of various countries’ political leaders by taking the politician salary relative to that country’s GDP per capita. Such a exercise thus takes into account the different ‘relative buying powers’ of the various salaries. The calculation shows that New Zealand pays a very generous salary to the prime minister – the sixth highest out of the 22 countries studied. Apparently John Key earns more (relatively) than other leaders like Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, Julia Gillard and David Cameron. At $393,000 a year, Key’s basic salary is almost ten times the GDP per person of $46,683. Is this too much? [Read more below]

Farewell to The Independent

Sadly, the final edition of The Independent came out last week. I’ve been reading this newspaper fairly regularly for the 18 years that it’s been published – primarily to read the latest political analysis of Chris Trotter (pictured on the right, in the 1980s). I’ve been variously outraged, inspired, informed and impressed by Trotter’s 1000-word essays on a weekly basis. So as a tribute to Trotter – which he possibly won’t appreciate – I’m reposting an old parody of one of his columns that I originally read back in 1996 (in Metro, I think). It nicely captures the more romantic and whimsical style of Trotter’s sometimes personal polemics. Also, check out Trotter’s excellent final column on his Bowalley Road blog, and also Jenni McManus’ farewell piece. [Read more below]

Excuses for ministerial misspending: [4] “But the corporate sector is worse”

Politicians and commentators have used the rather lame defence of the recently-revealed ministerial credit card rorting by saying that ‘others do it too’ – normally citing the corporate world, where it is argued that the use of company resources for personal expenditure is the norm. But this is problematic because, first, it’s not clear that this is actually the norm in the private sector, and second, the role and ethics of parliamentarians cannot be compared to employees in a regular job. While it might be perfectly reasonable for an worker to ‘game the system’ to maximize their personal financial remuneration, MPs are not workers. [Read more below]