Sam Mostyn’s eye-watering $214,000 pay bump is bad optics for the incoming Governor-General and Anthony Albanese as ordinary Australians struggle through cost of living pressures, writes Caleb Bond.
The Herald Sun’s Senior Writer Patrick Carlyon has slammed the decision to award incoming Governor-General Sam Mostyn a $200,000 pay rise.
“In this cost of living crisis we’re living in, how do you justify that?” he told Sky News host Rita Panahi.
“It’s been on every front page of every newspaper across Australia.”
Lots of pennies, actually.
The new Governor-General Sam Mostyn – a former Labor staffer, a left-wing activist from the women’s economic equality taskforce and the Climate Council, a wealthy businesswoman and board jockey from Citibank to Transurban to Mirvac – is set to be given a $214,000 pay rise by the government.
How – when people are struggling to put food on the table, rents and mortgages are going up and could well increase again when the RBA’s next rates decision comes down – could you possibly think it would be a good idea to increase the Governor-General’s pay by 43 per cent?
The current GG, David Hurley, who finishes up this week, is on $495,000.
Sky News host Liz Storer says the incoming governor-general would “turn down” a proposed 43 per cent pay rise if she was “smart”.
The Albanese government has proposed a $214,000 pay rise for incoming Governor-General Samantha Mostyn.
They are proposing to take the salary from $495,000 to $709,000.
“This is a figurehead,” Ms Storer told Sky News host Sharri Markson.
“If she’s smart, she’d turn it down, right?”
That’s nothing at which to sneeze.
But Sam Mostyn is set to take home $709,000 a year.
It’s about $100,000 more than the prime minister, who himself received a 3.5 per cent pay rise last week.
According to the government it’s just the right thing to do because Ms Mostyn does not receive a military pension like many of her predecessors.
Boo hoo.
So we have to pay her more than a million dollars extra over five years?
It’s not like Ms Mostyn is short of a dollar.
She’s one of the most high-flying and powerful board directors in the country.
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She could probably make more money by not taking up the role of governor-general and continuing to do what she’s doing now.
But that’s not the point of being the governor-general.
It’s not a job in the traditional sense – it’s a lifestyle.
I have no doubt its unrelenting and hard work.
You don’t exactly get to put your feet up on the weekend and enjoy the races.
But it’s a service to your country.
And yes, you deserve to be compensated for that – and compensated well.
But you can’t tell me that $495,000 wouldn’t have been compensation enough.
So why have they done this?
Sam Mostyn’s whopping $214,000 pay bump is not a good look for the incoming GG as Australians continue to weather cost-of-living pressures, writes Caleb Bond. Picture: NCA Newswire
Why have they decided to give such a whopping pay rise to Anthony Albanese’s hand-picked former Labor staffer?
It seems like such a political own goal in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.
The only reason of which I can think is that they had to.
They had to give Ms Mostyn a pay rise to entice her to be governor-general.
And, if that’s the case, she should never have been on the shortlist.
If you’re GG for the money then you shouldn’t be GG.
There is not one genuine justification for a $200k pay bump.
The principle of it, the look of it – it’s all bad.
This ought to be Anthony Albanese’s knighthood moment.
Remember when Prince Philip was awarded a knighthood by the Abbott Government in 2015?
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the Opposition had “three different energy policies in one weekend”.
“Not only did they have 22 different energy policies in 10 years, now we know they had three different energy policies in one weekend,” Mr Albanese said during Question Time on Wednesday.
“They’ve come up with the most expensive of new energy policy.”
People fell off their chairs out of embarrassment.
The media went into overdrive.
There was serious talk that it could be the end of Tony Abbott’s prime ministership, though that actually came later in the year.
And that didn’t cost us a cent.
All Abbott did was give a title to the Queen’s husband.
Mr Albanese, meanwhile, has given a $214,000 pay rise to an ideological mate who he has just handed – with the King’s approval, of course – the executive powers.
So just remember, next time you’re worrying about how to pay the school fees or the power bill, that Mr Albanese gave a left-wing mate a plum job and then a $214,000 pay rise despite her already having plenty of cash.
Normally we talk about jobs for the boys.
In this case it’s jobs for the girls.
And well-paid jobs at that.
Caleb Bond is a columnist at SkyNews.com.au and co-host of The Late Debate at 10pm Monday to Thursday on Sky News Australia.