YES PREMIER, Qld Style‏

Maybe you think that our pollies should be paid more? there is certainly a strong argument based on the principle that "if you pay peanuts, then you will get monkeys" and yet it seems that generally speaking, no matter how much these men and women of the public service receive in renumeration, we still get chimps throwing faeces at each other all day....Did you catch Question Time today, a bloody circus?

I think it is generally agreed that Federal Politicians do work harder than their State Government counterparts (always exceptions to the rule of course) thus I do not believe that a State Premier should be getting more of an annual wage than the Federal Treasurer, The Speaker of the House, The Federal Opposition Leader & all of the Federal Cabinet Ministers, as is the case with the Qld Premier, Campbell Newman who is set to now get a 22% pay rise, bumping up his annual salary by $67,972.00 to $379,562.00. That is over $40,000 a year more than the Ministry Executive. It is staggeringly unfair in my opinion.

The entire game of selecting a panel to "independently" adjudicate on a pay rise seems fair enough but that all depends on who does the selection of that panel and who is selected. The Premier's department made this choice after the public outrage back in August last year when the Government tried to slip through a 42% pay rise....... busted!

The whole thing just looks like a script from my favourite piece of political satire ever, YES MINISTER and if you are a fan then you would be familiar with the excellent work on that show by one of my favourite political cartoonists ever, Gerald Scarfe.

This gave me a great chance to pay homage to Gerald via this cartoon in making my point.