We pay top dollar and get monkeys #qldpol #smoqld #keepourdoctors
How do you trouser a pay rise for 70 grand? With a big smile, if you’re Campbell Newman. And a deep, quiet blush of embarrassment if you’re Annastacia Palaszczuk, because your 70-thousand dollar bump turned into 80.
It seems a little excessive, doesn’t it? Especially with the government this close to collapsing the state’s health system by mugging senior doctors. The doctors didn’t ask for more money, just so you know. They didn’t really ask for anything other than not being mugged by the Health Minister, Lawrence Springborg, who decided to go ahead and mug them anyway. (Right after he’d finished scrapping the program of free safety checks for baby capsules.)
And why not mug the doctors. It’s not like you’re gonna need them to tend to the little victims of poorly fitted car safety capsules after all.
So the Borg’s got a pay rise which is bigger than your actual salary too, assuming you’re an average punter and not a Google executive or Queensland Government minister. So he must be right. He must be crushing it as Health Minister. Otherwise, why piss Cristal into his pockets which are already full of gold doubloons?
Now, granted, pay rises for politicians are an easy mark for lazy columnists. But they make it so eeeeasy.
The last pay rise you got was, what, 2 or 3 per cent? Did you even notice it when the tax man had taken his cut? Because even though he’d grab at least half of Newman’s increase, that still leave the Premier with an extra seven or eight hundred bucks a week for pizzas and beer.
A week.
Not a year or even a month.
Would you notice an extra 700 a week dropping into your poorly named savings account?
Yes I suspect you would.
But here’s a more interesting question, working as hard as you possibly could, not skiving off for any sly ciggy breaks or coffee runs, opting out of the office gossip circle, deleting Flappy Birds or Candy Crush from your phone so you don’t spend too long in the dunny, basically maximising your productivity to the max … do you honestly believe you’d be worth an extra $700 a week?
And you arguably do more for the community than somebody who seems to fill his days mugging doctors and cancelling baby capsule programs. Because, you know, those pay rises aren’t gonna pay for themselves.
Source: Brisbane Times