justified fully by the need for the likes of Emerson getting singing lessons as well as some ethics based training.

The high salaries and perks serve two purposes. The first is attracting greedy, amoral people into politics, people who will be eager to do the bidding of the rich and powerful in exchange for personal advantage. The second is coopting the occasional incorruptible politician who slips through the preselection net. He/She soon acquires large investments to protect and expensive new hobbies, with new friends to go with them, and ceases to identify with ordinary people.

It is often argued that we need to pay market rates to get the best people, rather than relying on love of country or the desire to give something back to the community. But how is high intelligence, for example, good for us, if the politicians who have it simply use it to benefit themselves at our expense?

bonmot,
If I hear him defend this pay rise & accept it then they've lost me & many others.

Many of them urge wage control, except when it comes to themselves.

Many of them urge wage control
Chris Lewis,
this is beyond wage control, that's just blatant stealing. They are the Public Servants & we the public weren't consulted about granting them this rise or were we ?

What I really love is when retired politicians, like Richardson, make the "if we pay peanuts..." claim.
Remarkable, since he was a polly before the big pay rises.
If the higher rates are going to attract better quality, shouldn't all the existing pollies step down to make way for them?
The hypocrisy is truly breathtaking. When both the major parties have pretty much accepted neo-liberalism and even enterprise bargaining, who has a stronger, more united union front than our salary fixed politicians?
Comparisons with private enterprise is another joke, as there are some dramatic differences from the public to the private sector.
what about comparisons with other nations?
President Obama, the single most powerful man in the world, gets $400k.
US Senators and Congressmen get $172k.
I think the evidence from this experiment is already in.
When you offer more money, you attract people who are really good at making -themselves- more money.
Thanks to the amalgamations we didn't want and didn't have to have here in Qld, the average Mayor and Councillors make about 4 times as much as regional Mayors and Councillors in NSW.
Having lived in both states, I'm not seeing any value.