Grey River Argus FRIDAY, September 28th, 1934. A SWOLLEN SALARY.

Grey River Argus, 28 September 1934, Page 4

Grey River Argus FRIDAY, September 28th, 1934. A SWOLLEN SALARY.

The protest in Parliament against, piling up his salary for the Secretary of the Treasury will meet with the approval of a great majority of the public. Last year it stood at the substantial sum of £1,142. An addition of £2OO was then made, and this year, on top of that there has been a further £5OO increase; so that it now tots up to £1,842. Contrasting this with the treatment meted out. in recent years to the vast majority of the public servants, the poorest-paid of them,in -particular, the Opposition had a duty to draw public attention to such marked and untimely discrimination. When the Government was slashing down the pay of the public servants, it recognised that an enormous sacrifice was being imposed. In making now a moderate restoration of those cuts, the Ministry say it is some reward for the way in which such sacrifices were borne. But in the case of the already highlypaid official under notice, the Government has carefully refrained from exacting the sacrifice which even those other public .servants who were on the low. est salaries had exacted from them. Why should merit on the one hand be ignored, whilst on the other hand it is in this singular instance so lavishly recognised? The Ministerial reply to that query is that so much was due to exceptional ability. What the average person will say, however, is that it has been the office that has been singled out. for such special treatment, and that it is quite an anomalous and unwarranted exception which has been made. The past three years has been a period during which sacrifice has been preached by the Government to everybody, but the practice has been to enforce it more particularly upon those least able to bear it. There has been in this instance an obvious violation of the principle. The raising of the question of

exceptional ability—and such j ability may at once be admitted . —does not for a moment justify or excuse the violation. Tens of thousands more have been expected and compelled to put their ability at the disposal of the State for less remuneration than they formerly had, and no exceptions should be made. The crucial point is that the Secretary of the Treasury has been appointed one of the Reserve Bank Directors simply because of his Departmental position. It has not been the acquisition of any new abilities but simply the acquisition ex officio of a director’s seat that has occasioned the addition of £5OO per annum to the Secretarial salary of £1342. Such a piling up of salary, in these parlous times, when the State is taxing the poorest of people right and left in unprecedented fashion, is a bad example, as well as an injustice to the other public servants whose abilities had been largely ignored when the cuts were so generally inflicted. It is significant that Ministers could find no better defence than to quote instances where high salaries were paid other public officials, and to say departmental heads were underpaid by the State. They certainly dared not suggest the one under notice came into the category of the underpaid, and they failed to justify the exceptional treatment as utterly as their local

apologist, our evening contemporary. It felt the only resort was to cast on the Labour Parliamentarians the slur that they have never had so high a salary as the Secretary to the Treasury, but that they could be expected to sink their principles if such a salary could be thereby secured. It implies that the position in question could only be properly filled by such a payment, but what, warranty there may be for Ihis assertion is left to conjecture. Heads of departments are able to rely on their subordinates to a very great extent, and the share of the latter in the departmental work ought therefore to obtain its proportionate recognition if the head is allowed extra pay, whether he gets an addition of £lOO per annum, or of £2OO one year and £5OO more the following year. Our contemporary objects to a comparison between the salaries of the ministerial head and the Secretary of the Treasury, but there is another comparison more to the point. It is between the Secretary’s present salary and what he received prior to his £7OO increase. That leaves aside a comparison between his salary increases and the salary reductions of practically every other public servant. The “Star” suggests that lower paid public servants receive too little in comparison to Members of Parliament, but what shall be said when the lower laid public servants’ remuneration is compared with that of the official who receives more than four times the salary of Parliamentarians! Finally what must lowest paid public servants think when they remember that during the past two years one of the highest paid public servants has obtained increases sufficient to pay the whole salaries of three of themselves.