Coronavirus Australia: Tony Abbott calls on MPs and mandarins to share recession pain
Former prime minister Tony Abbott has called on MPs and top bureaucrats to share the pain of the COVID-19 recession and take a temporary 20 per cent pay cut.
In a series of podcast interviews with the Institute of Public Affairs and an opinion article in The Australian, Mr Abbott has spoken about the need to better define the nation’s values in a post-coronavirus Australia.
The former Liberal leader told IPA director John Roskam the federal government should start by following New Zealand’s lead and cut the pay of public servants and politicians earning above $150,000.
One of the most grating phrases of this whole pandemic has been we’re all in this together because frankly, we haven’t been in it together,” he said.
“We have a private sector calamity happening. And again, as much as I respect the professionalism of the public service, no public servant has lost his or her job, no public servant has had his or her pay cut.
“I’m not normally a big fan of the New Zealand Prime Minister (Jacinda Ardern) but as I understand it, members of parliament and senior public servants in New Zealand have taken a 20 per cent pay cut for six months. READ MORE:Now is a good time to reassess what it means for us to be Australian|Big cities our big losers|Victoria records 317 new virus cases|Contact tracing teams swamped as count surges
“In this instance, following Jacinda Ardern in temporarily reducing the salaries of MPs and, say, public servants earning over $150,000 a year would be a sensible thing to do.”
Scott Morrison has frozen the pay of MPs and bureaucrats in the fallout of the pandemic, but has refused several calls to slash public pay packets.
Mr Abbott writes in The Australian that the nation’s post-pandemic recovery will be held back if it cannot have more open debates about its values.
He highlights the Black Lives Matter protests and left-wing objections to the phrase “all lives matter”, used by some far-right groups, as a sign of the intolerance of the “talking class” and the inability of the Australian political system to lead reform.
“There will be a fierce dispute, of course, about whether it is possible even to have ‘Australian values’, let alone to specify what they are, but that has been part of our recent problem — an unwillingness to argue about the things that really matter lest someone, somewhere, be upset,” Mr Abbott said.
