Opposition predicts brain drain of State service

Press, 3 April 1987, Page 24

Opposition predicts brain drain of State service

PA Wellington The Opposition has warned that a brain drain from senior Government jobs would continue as a bill limiting top pay rises was reported back to Parliament <*The • Higher Salaries Commission Amendment Bill, which sets a limit of JO per cent on pay rises for members of Parliament, judges, and senior State servants, was reported back from the Government Administration Select Committee unchanged Michael Cox (Nat, Manawatu), said the Government was choosing to ignore a problem of high' turnover in senior State posts. < He recalled the submissiA of the

eral, Mr Brian Tyler, one of 39 made to the committee, which said that 68 per cent of senior Treasury advisory officers had left last year for the private sector, where salaries were on average 75 per cent higher. “If you want the best advice in the country to run the country you have to pay the sort of salaries that match the private sector,” Mr Cox said. “The bill’s intervention has meant that these problems, ongoing running sores in our advisory departments, will continue. There will be a loss of personnel.” The Minister of State Services, Mr Rodger, said that no-one under the commission’s jursidiction would starve. Ms Helen Clarke (Lab.,

Mount Albert) said that previous determinations of the commission had filtered through to cause higher State wage settlements than would have otherwise been the case. “It would be hard to sustain an argument that there is not at least an indirect relationship between settlements that occur lower down in the public sector ... and those higher settlements for those upper level employees," she said. The bill was introduced last month ’ after the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, complained that previous commission determinations had "hijacked” the Government. The Government would not be a leader in escalating the wage round this year,£e said.