In Australia, our leaders are not in charge of their own pay rates. Some years ago they invented a “Remuneration Tribunal” to do that task. They are independent, well, sort of. Guess who appoints them.
Back in 2006, our Federal Politicians were awarded a pay rise of 7%.
In June of this year they were awarded another 6.7%.
Nearly 14% in less than 18 months!
While pensioners get nothing and the lowest-paid people in Australia get a 2 per cent pay rise.
Cartoonist Kudelka was able to see the injustice.
If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, and if you factor in peanut perks, peanut lurks, peanut allowances, exotic foreign peanuts during overseas study tours, hands-free peanut eating time in chauffer-driven cars, excellent post-parliamentary private peanut-reaping consultancies and last but certainly not least, peanut superannuation, you get very fat contented monkeys indeed.
A few years ago, the incumbent monkeys generously voted to reduce the peanut allowance of future monkeys to save the peanuts of Australia a few handfulls at tax time. Strangely, when the future monkeys became the incumbent monkeys, this turned out to be an unsatisfactory arrangement and the peanut allowance was increased with a minimum of flinging of fecal matter, though some might say the displays of public masturbation were a bit unsightly.
We might be only paying enough to get monkeys representing us in federal parliament, but they are a model of how Industrial Relations can work harmoniously in this country if only people could get along as well as monkeys do.
Filed under: Australia, Blogroll, John Howard, Perth, Political, Western Australia, cartoon, humor, humour, news | Tagged: cartoon
