October 12, 2012 11:00am by David Farrar

Goff has a point

Labour’s Phil Goff has attacked a big pay rise for the head of the Foreign Affairs ministry as a blatant double standard at a time when many diplomats are losing their jobs.

Figures on state sector chief executives’ pay released today showed Mfat boss John Allen’s salary last year was the highest among chief executives, with a pay rise of $40,000 taking his package between $620,000 and $629,999.

I have no problem with Govt CEOs getting paid market rates, and getting pay rises when they perform well.

But the MFAT restructuring led by the CEO has been somewhat of a clusterfuck, and for the SSC to give the CEO that presided over it a 7% or so payrise is going to go down badly with many. John Allen was an excellent CEO of NZ Post, and may well be doing many things well at MFAT – but the restructuring was a critical piece of work, and there was a near complete failure to get institutional support for it.

This is like the vexed issue of private sector CEOs pay. I don’t think most people are against CEOs getting huge salaries – so long as they and their companies are doing well. Few people ever would have claimed that Rob Fyfe didn’t add value to Air NZ well in excess of a million dollars. Steve Jobs was once valued by the market as being worth several billion to Apple, as that is how far their share price fell on news of his cancer.

But what annoys people is when a company is not performing, and the CEO gets a big pay increase and bonuses.

The figures, released by the State Services Commission also showed shamed former head of the Department of Building and Housing (DBH) Katrina Bach was paid out $81,105 in entitlements when she left the job earlier this year.

This one is a non-issue though. If someone is owed annual leave, they of course get it paid out when they leave. Surely there is no suggestion that the Government should break the law and not pay someone their legal entitlements.

Overall, the average increase in base salary for chief executives was 2.7 per cent. That compared with movement in average base salary across all public service staff of 3 per cent, Rennie said. …

One fifth of state sector bosses took an effective pay cut with either no change to their pay or a reduction.

2.7% overall is pretty modest. The only real issue is the big increase for MFAT CEO.