Populist gesture may please punters

SYMBOLISM in politics can be important.

This week a spokesman for the Prime Minister indicated he was considering freezing salaries of MPs for the second year in a row. On Thursday the Finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner, suggested politicians would lose touch with voters if their pay was increased. This is misguided thinking. The simple fact is, as the old adage goes, if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.

An annual salary of $127,000 for backbench MPs is hardly peanuts, but it is considerably less than most of them could earn outside politics. More importantly it is less than many potential servants to the public purse would be willing to accept to move into politics in the first place. This is the key point.

Commentators, including this one, drone on about the need to improve standards among our elected officials. The likelihood of attracting qualified and committed individuals into the difficult and demanding job of being an MP is reduced if their salaries continue to fall when compared to salaries earned by other professionals.

It is all good and well to advocate a freeze on politicians salaries when, like Rudd, you are the Prime Minister earning more than $300,000 a year and married to a woman worth tens of millions of dollars. Rudd is not your average parliamentarian.

Most backbenchers, as a result of the demands of being an elected official, are married to committed husbands and wives acting as the primary carer of their children. As such they are not substantially adding to the family income.

Heartfelt stories about politicians doing it tough are difficult to sell, but the public should be under no illusion that politicians, especially backbenchers, are living the easy life. An average plumber earns considerably more than they do.

Unless the public wants only the extremes of the community going into politics - landed gentry born into money with no care for their political salaries, or those without the kind of success in their professional lives such that they increase their earning power by entering parliament - freezing MPs' salaries will be a detriment to the nation.

We already suffer from an over-allocation of former political staffers moving into politics. Such staffers earn less than their political masters. With competition from outsiders waning, these hacks are even more likely to become politicians if salaries for MPs continue to drop. I can't imagine that is what the public wants. Denying MPs a salary increase in 2009, when they didn't receive one in 2008 and they are already earning substantially less than most counterparts overseas, is downright mean-spirited. Throw in the fact the Prime Minister's own chief of staff, 29 years of age to be sure, is earning more than $200,000 a year and has been awarded substantial salary bonuses on top of that, and the word hypocrisy sits neatly with Rudd's politicians' salary freeze.

Over the years I have been the first person to call for improved standards among our political elite. From pre-parliamentary career experience to a willingness to defy party political directives, I have been critical of our present batch of MPs. Just the other week on this page I made the point that on the Coalition side too many MPs are over the age of 60 (25 of 30 in the parliament, to be precise) and they need to make way for new talent.

Thankfully there will always be people in Australia willing to sacrifice financially to serve their country. But with 226 House of Representatives and Senate positions to fill, talent can be thin on the ground.

Rudd's salary freeze won't help. The last politician to have a negative impact on political entitlements was former Labor leader Mark Latham.

He insisted political superannuation be cut. In the heated climate of the pre-2004 election, Howard succumbed and cut superannuation entitlements for all new MPs. Incidentally, Latham is now retired, partly living off superannuation.

Howard's side continues to curse its former leader's name in private for having supported Latham's reforms. Rudd's name is now being similarly admonished. A Labor backbencher I spoke to used language too colourful to quote in this column when describing the likely salary freeze. More quotable, he added: "Let's hope Rudd's popularity fades. When it does he will either start caring about what we think or we will encourage (Julia) Gillard to knock him off." That's an interesting observation for a few years from now. Ironically, popularity is why Rudd is advocating a salary freeze.

Voters are, and long have been, down on their politicians. But public cynicism about politicians may catch Rudd out on this one. His salary freeze has not equally applied to the public service, political staffers or his own advisers.

The Prime Minister is after cheap political points. He should know better.

Peter van Onselen is an associate professor of politics and government at Edith Cowan University.