Union protest decries pay rise for Qld MPs
By Chris O'Brien and Donna Field
ABC News.


About 100 union protesters have staged a noisy demonstration outside today's meeting of the Queensland Cabinet in Brisbane.      

They are voicing their opposition to a $57,000 pay rise for the state's MPs.

Ministers have defended the pay increase, saying the law links the pay of Queensland MPs to their federal counterparts.

The pay decision was handed down by the Remuneration Tribunal, which ruled the Bligh government's 2009 freeze on MP salaries was unlawful.

Last week, Acting Premier Jeff Seeney announced the rise would be cost-neutral because he was cutting MPs' allowances and reducing the money paid to political parties.

    A Government which since being elected has preached austerity, slashed, burned. It's almost beyond belief ... they announced a pay rise of 42 per cent for themselves.
    John Battams, Qld Council of Unions.          

That was not enough to stop several crossbench MPs condemning the pay rise.

Today, Queensland Council of Unions president John Battams told protesters it was grossly unfair.

"A Government which since being elected has preached austerity, slashed, burned... pay rises of 2 per cent for its own employees.

"It's almost beyond belief that last week they announced a pay rise of 42 per cent for themselves.      

"If there was an emergency in this building at this moment, the people who would come to the rescue would be our firies and ambos.

"These people haven't had an increase in pay because of this Government in over two years, yet they want to pay themselves an extra $57,000."      


Independent member for the Sunshine Coast seat of Nicklin, Peter Wellington, says he will would not accept the pay rise.

Mr Wellington says he will vote against the increase and use it entirely in his electorate.

"For the Attorney-General [Jarrod Bleijie] to say we can't make it retrospective, well, the constitutional advice I've received is that's questionable advice," he said.

"I'd challenge the Attorney-General to when Parliament returns at our next sitting in August to change the law, make it retrospective and let's wait and see who goes off to court to challenge it."

Transport Minister Scott Emerson says the pay rise is out of his hands.

"The system's there, decided by a tribunal rather than politicians, so it's going to be up to Parliament to make any change," he said.

Verge wrote on Jul 8^th, 2013 at 4:50pm:



"The pay decision was handed down by the Remuneration Tribunal,..."
Another lot without the balls to make their own rulings.

Maybe we need to disband all govts and have these, so-called, 'independent tribunals' run the show....

Pay rise prompts street protest in Brisbane

    by: ANDREW FRASER
    From: The Australian
    July 09, 2013

   

COMMUNITY anger over a $57,000-a-year pay rise for Queensland politicians spilled over into Brisbane streets yesterday.      

Trade unionists staged a lively protest outside the weekly cabinet meeting, forcing the government to claim the pay hike was "revenue-neutral", with electoral allowances and funding to political parties being cut.

Firefighters, unionists and public servants carried placards outside the Executive Building in the CBD reading: "57,000 reasons not to vote for LNP" and "Pollies pig out".      

They chanted "LNP, listen up -- Queensland has had enough" and threw fake money on the ground, picked up by a man wearing an oversized papier mache head of Premier Campbell Newman.      

What especially irritated the protesters was that the government had gone to court to prevent public servants from getting a 2.2 per cent interim pay increase.


But Acting Premier Jeff Seeney said the state government had to give the pay rise as it was linked to federal MP's salaries, but in response they had cut electoral allowances and funding to political parties so that the pay rise for the politicians did not cost taxpayers any more money.

About $6 million would be reallocated within the budget from allowances and political funding to salaries, but there would be no extra money.

"For many years the electoral allowance has been a de facto wage rise -- we're just cleaning it up," he said.

He said that, in his own case, he received an annual electoral allowance of $92,000, but felt it should be much smaller.

"There is a strong case for discretionary allowance but a much smaller one, and in my own case it should be far less than $92,000," he said.

Mr Seeney has taken all the decisions on the pay increase while the Premier is on leave, but he said that Mr Newman had been told about what was happening and was comfortable with the plan to grant the pay increases and slash the electoral allowances and the funding granted to political parties.

Mr Seeney said he would have felt cowardly if he had waited for Mr Newman to deal with the issue when he returned on Thursday. "He understood the decisions that we had taken and he was in agreement with them."

Mr Seeney said he had held discussions with the major political parties about the reduced public funding they would be receiving and "some of those meetings have not ended peacefully".

Queensland Council of Unions president John Battams said the rise for MPs was a disgrace. "They, in fact, had the option -- they could have changed the law," he said.

"There was no justification for linking their pay to federal parliamentarians."