LNP backbencher senator Ian Macdonald is really crabby about Malcolm Turnbull scrapping the gold card that gave ex-politicians free domestic business class air travel for life.
He is really steamed about. Man, is he cross.
Last week Macdonald
took an extremely brave stance against his own party’s decision in Parliament, citing the fact that what a lot of people don’t realise is that politicians don’t get paid *that* well, actually.
“It’s about time our leaders started just emphasising how much work politicians do, how much commitment most of the people who sit in this parliament have. They don’t get particularly well paid. Most parliamentarians, well those on this side, would have done infinitely better financially staying in their legal practice, staying in their business, staying in their veterinary practice, staying in their jobs they had before.”
Macdonald, who is a backbench senator, commands an annual salary of $200,000.
Today the bravest man in all the land went a step further, not only suggesting that removing the parliamentary privilege from ex-politicians not make skerrick of difference to the budget, but then invoking the political nous of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Idi Amin in asserting that if we’re going to take a “populist” approach to parliamentary privilege, then maybe we should do away with parliament altogether.
Repeat: LNP senator Ian Macfarlane, in whining yet a-bloody-gain about how it’s bad that the Turnbull Government has removed *lifetime free business class travel* from the list of things you get when retiring from parliament, invoked actual Hitler.
“If we are to follow the populist approach, why bother with those hated, money-grabbing, self-serving politicians at all.”
“Perhaps Hitler and Stalin or Idi Amin had the right idea: do not bother about a parliament and you do not have to bother about those pesky parliamentarians at all.”
That’s in Hansard now, for the record. Those sentences now permanently reside in the annals of our nation’s history.
Macdonald (and this again is about Turnbull removing access to free lifetime business class domestic air travel for former politicians) then went on a quite extraordinary attack directed at “lazy journalists,” “shock jocks,” and “a small section of the community who complain a lot.” All because he asserts none of those people know the real struggle of having to shoulder the workload of a politician, which often entails working all day and sometimes into the night for up to six days a week with *SOMETIMES ONLY* four weeks off a year, all the while doing this for as little as just under $50 an hour.
“The shock jocks and the lazy journalists and sub editors churn out the populist lines because it is easy to do so, and it always gets an energetic response from a small section of the community — a small section who complain a lot but never offer themselves for election to parliament because they have never had the energy, the dedication and the commitment to do the hard yards and get elected in the first place, and to then do that work for something less than $50 an hour for all hours of the day and night, often at least six days a week, often for up to 48 weeks a year, in a job where there is no privacy, no down time.”
Such bravery. Such incredible courage. To speak out for the poor folks forced to eke out survival on a mere Two Hundred Thousand Dollars a year.
It is lifetime free business class domestic air travel for people who have retired from parliament on the extremely generous politician’s pension.
Of all the hills to die on, this is basically a crater.
Photo: Liberal Party.
