Do as I say, not as I do – Rudd’s brazen double standard on wage restraint
PM Kevin Rudd [ABC1]
While Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has asked Australians to show restraint in wage demands, Steve Lewis in the Daily Telegraph reports, “The Prime Minister has secretly paid two senior advisers – including his ‘boy wonder’ chief of staff, Alister Jordan – special top-up payments to bolster their $200,000-plus incomes.
“Despite calling on workers to defer pay claims, Mr Rudd intervened to have a salary bonus paid to Mr Jordan, his 29-year-old long-serving confidant.
“Another senior adviser has also breached the Government’s official salary cap, boosting his ‘principal adviser’ salary above the top level of $192,000,” the Daily Telegraph says.
Ironically, Ewin Hannan and Nicola Berkovic in The Australian report, “Unions have promised wage restraint, including potentially delaying pay rises where companies are struggling, for the next year provided employers seek to protect jobs and deliver bigger rises when the economy recovers.”
In an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, Mirko Bagaric argues, “The biggest enemy of ‘working families’ is not the financial crisis. It is the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and his offensive and simplistic suggestion that middle Australia should show restraint in wage negotiations so as not to compromise their jobs.”
