Many moons ago when I was actively involved in orgnisational politics I held a strong conviction that remuneration in the political world should be on the basis of compensation for acheived level of earnings prior to election to office plus a premium and then additional payment for senior offices held (such as a ministry etc) and that this be accomopanied by a maximum term such as three or four.
The reason for this is that it is and remains my contention that our system actively encourages mediocrity and entrenchment. For many parliamentarians the saary they earn will be the highest they have ever or will ever have and the qualifications are only that of convincing enough people in their local party structure to give them a nomination and then get lucky on election day.
Thus parliamentary remuneration actively encourages contest by the mediocre and actively discourages particularly business achievers who are positively disadvantaged from spending term/s in parliament by the loss of earnings. taken on top of the interlude in their career.
Critics said that this was unfair - that higher earners should be satisfied with the honour of office. Wouldn't this also apply to those whose previous remuneration had been from Arts Council grants or Centrelink?
Parliamentary life should be open to all. It just shouldn't so positively discriminate towards those of possibly lesser achievement by financially penalising them.
Especially when one takes into account the sinkhole for money that remuneration of politicians is now - and how little we get for it.
(You can take it as read that I also favour the retrospective abolition of the travesty that is parliamentary superannuation....)
