READER'S VIEW: Return to days where politicians weren't paid

Our first politicians worked voluntarily for the good of their country.

Andrew Fisher, who became Australian Prime Minister for the first time on November 13, 1908. As war in Europe was breaking out, he pledged during an speech for his third re-election that Australia would defend Britain "down to our last man and our last shilling". Picture: Courtesy of Australian War Memor

AN independent tribunal has recommended that Queensland politicians should be given an increase in salaries, already in the vicinity of $150,000 per annum, to catch up with those paid in other jurisdictions (TMB Jan 13).

Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australian volunteers run practically every club and association in the country, with no thought of remuneration. In fact it mostly costs them.

Our first politicians worked voluntarily for the good of their country. The first record I have found of a politician being paid was during the NSW elections of 1874 when the Sydney Trades & Labour Council sponsored Angus Cameron, a carpenter to enable him to represent workers' rights in the parliament.

However the first colonial parliaments were comprised of a very small percentage of the population, those with property qualifications, less than two percent.

Manhood suffrage was achieved some time after 1850, earlier in the Australian colonies than anywhere else in the world.

The early trade unions did not see it as their function to enter into politics. By common consent the relations between employers and workers was not a proper subject for legislative action.

I don't know when politicians were first paid for their services, but no doubt the payment would have been modest. How and when they set themselves above the populace they served I do not know, but they most certainly have got their snouts in the trough now. That saga would make a good subject for a university thesis or journalistic exercise.

Perhaps it is time to go back to where politics was not regarded as a job for life but as a dedicated calling of service to the people. Their salaries, expenses and entitlements should be reviewed - federal, state and local. As a starting point, no salary and only half their expenses remunerated would encourage frugality. And parliamentary pensions paid on the same basis as the rest of us.

Under those conditions we may get the statesmen we once had instead of the sickening, shameless, sniping, conniving politicians we now have.

As one politician famously said the age of entitlement is over. The greed and extravagances exhibited recently is an insult to every volunteer in the country - the SES and marine rescue personnel, firefighters, lifesavers to name but a few.

Don Longbottom

Biloela

Originally published as READER'S VIEW: Return to days where politicians weren't paid