The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1928 HIGHER WAGES FOR M.P.’S

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 483, 12 October 1928, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1928 HIGHER WAGES FOR M.P.’S

MEMBERS of Parliament want liiglier wages for their *'•* exhausting work. They do not care personally to advocate a rise in their pay, but they would like to get more money. It would he unkind and incongruous to blame them for that, for in the same desire and yearning we are all “John Tamson’s bairns.” So, with a fine delicacy of thought and with almost perfect decorum in approach, Mr. T. K. Sidey, M.P., who retires from active politics this year, has undertaken chivalrously -to hell the cat. The veteran member for Dunedin South not only speaks as one having a full knowledge of his subject, but is now able to speak with greater freedom and entirely without any selfish interest or motive. He is one of several legislators whose lines in life have been east in pleasant places, who do not need to struggle for higher wages. Prom a politician’s point of view, Mr. Sidey has prepared a strong plaint for his old friends in Parliament and also for those strangers who, notwithstanding the poor wages of legislators, are knocking loudly at the gate, clamorously eager to exhaust themselves and make a great sacrifice in the cause of their country and Empire. And he presses forward his eloquent plea with almost the same earnestness and quiet vigour as that which gained,* after many years of bulldog tenacity, his split triumph in daylight saving. Doubtless his purpose and policy are similar. If sixty minutes of saved daylight be too generous, then take half an hour and, he happy; if representative members of Parliament may not secure £>2oo a year increase,-then let them at least have a rise of £IOO. It is urged by Mr. Sidey that “the work' of a member of Parliament is never done.” Naturally, he does not mean exactly what the disillusioned taxpayer will read into the assertion. Mr. Sidey clearly means that a politician’s work goes on all the time for ever. But the Dunedin pleader for more pay for M.P.’s is much too serious for such quibbling. He sincerely believes that they are overworked and most inadequately paid. They never have a day’s leisure in delightful aloneness. They are always at the beck and call of their constituents, and the tide of their correspondence never ebbs. Moreover, they must attend public functions, also meet many claims for subscriptions to all sorts of appealing causes, while every third year each may have to spend £2OO and perhaps a little over that sum on fighting some foolish rival who wants to take over the suffering and sacrifice of the man in Parliament. There was a time, a glad time, when politicians were heroes to the people, when the honorarium was merely a sessional allowance. It was assumed then that M.P.’s had other sources of income and had private work to do in the recess. Now (Mr. Sidey points out) the honorarium is a salary which to an everincreasing number of members is their only means of livelihood. Precisely ! And that is why the taxpayers do not choose to support too great an increase in politicians’ wages. There are far too many men in Parliament now who look on their position as a billet, much more agreeable at its worst than bricklaying or milking cows. The public will have little sympathy with the sorrowful complaint of politicians that their work is never done. Their system of working is foolish and tends to exhaustion. The spectacle of eighty members sleepily squeezing important legislative proposals through the statutory mill at three o’eloek in the morning is as ludicrous as it is lamentable. If members of Parliament expect to get higher wages they must prove their worth. Do they earn their present wages? That is the test question.