The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1929 A BONUS FOR POLITICIANS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 815, 8 November 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1929 A BONUS FOR POLITICIANS

THERE is a confident report from Wellington today that members of Parliament are to be paid a bonus of £IOO each this year in lieu of an honest, open and a straight-out increase in their salaries. The announcement, it is true, has been made in the form of a prediction, hut there is enough-evidence of anticipatory truth behind it to make the report something more substantial than rumour. Incidentally, it may be observed that the prophets have said nothing at all about any possible chance of a no-confidence motion on the prospective robbery of Peter the taxpayer to pay Paul the politician. There are some questions apparently on which divided political parties can unite in perfect amity and with complete unanimity of opinion and desire. Public comment on the Santa Claus pioliey of the Government and rival parties will vary, of course, hut in such variation any support of the preposterous trick will he microscopic. Those who shudder at frank criticism of politicians! may be content with a polite rebuke of the generous Administration, but those who stand for truth and candour, though the heavens should fall, will condemn without mercy the very idea of paying a special bonus to representative men whose work in Parliament this year has been the worst and most extravagant in New Zealand political history. The fact that politicians must toe as the rhinoceros does not justify their “hide” in even talking about helping themselves from the depleted public purse at a time when they have proved themselves hopelessly unable to help other people in a worse plight as regards wages and the burden of the high cost of living. If it he true that Parliament in the last hour of its' expensive session contemplates the provision of a bonus of either £SO or £IOO a year for each of its mediocre members, then all its turgid talk about the necessity of increasing taxation, and also about the impossibility of restoring the salary cut to low-paid Civil Servants must he characterised as inexcusable political humbug. The Government and the bifurcated Opposition, which votes this way and that or any way that will keep politicians in a good billet, have asserted repeatedly that neither the heads nor the tails of the Civil Service can he given an increase in their salaries and wages. Moreover, the Administration has found it necessary to break its solemn pledges to decrease taxation and put into inequitable operation an opposite policy. And in order to practise that iniquitous policy on all the people the Labour Party had to sacrifice one of its most cherished principles. And now there is a prospect of slipping into the final Appropriation Bill a clause, providing for the presentation of an unearned bonus to politicians. In all forms of work and business there is only one test of a plea for an increase in wages or salaries: Does the service of the pleader deserve a better monetary reward? In other words, is the claimant worth higher payment? Possibly the politicians, in this ease, will have no hesitation in replying (to use their own jargon) “in the affirmative.” But they alone will give such an assertive response. Looked at in the most favourable and sympathetic light, and making the most charitable allowance for the position of a minority Government and the nunjerical confusion of parties, no unbiased observer of Parliamentary work this year can say honestly that it has been worth a penny more than is being paid for it. There is, of course, no denying the fact that members of Parliament have exhausted themselves as severely this session as they have exhausted the patience of the people, but their long sittings and protracted debates could not he mistaken for first-class work. Any average local body would have done better with less fuss and without any payment at all. As for the tearful complaint of politicians that their work is never done, that can be dismissed as exalted pretence. It is true that many of them have to keep two homes going, hut they easily forget the counterbalancing fact that some of them also keep two jobs going, and do reasonably well out of both. They are paid better now than are the superior politicians in Great Britain and Ireland, and receive only a little less than the administrators on the Continent who deal with the greatest problems of nations. They certainly are not entitled to a Christmas gift of £IOO merely because their had work has involved an extravagant period of overtime. The taxpayer is more than dissatisfied with Parliament. Politicians should take heed of their unpopularity lest they lose their wages, far less a bonus for a miserable record of public service.