Last year, the Speaker ended MP's international travel rort, which had seen us paying up to 90% of the cost of senior MP's international holidays. Now it looks like we're about to get the sting in the tail: a massive increase in MP's salaries as "compensation":
MPs are set to get a potentially large pay rise weeks before the general election.This is simply obscene. Quite apart from the fact that the rort was never justified, making "compensation" for its loss unjustifiable, this also "compensates" MPs by three times the cost of the rort. And MP's wonder why the public think they are scum...The increase will compensate MPs for losing the international travel subsidy, which the Remuneration Authority had estimated was worth about $10,000 a year.
Last year, the Remuneration Authority gave MPs and ministers a 1.4% pay rise as well as an extra $2000 a year to take account of falling use of the travel subsidy but did not fully compensate MPs for losing the travel entitlement.
The media should be getting MPs on record about this now. Will they accept this unjustifiable, inflated "compensation"? If so, what's their justification for rorting us more, especially in the middle of a recession when ordinary people are lucky to get a meagre 1.9% pay rise? And if they don't answer, and maintain their cosy conspiracy of silence on their perks, they will deserve every bit of their reputation.
