Peter Williams say leadership isn’t being a late follower

Peter Williams at Newshub makes the point:

So the Prime Minister, the cabinet and the heads of Government departments are taking a pay cut. It will be a 20 percent cut and will last for six months.

That’s great. I applaud Jacinda Ardern for doing it. It shows that people at the top, the well paid, are prepared to do what the rest of us are doing and taking a drop in income.

But I think she was pushing the envelope a bit when she said it was about leadership. 

No it wasn’t. It was anything but leadership. In fact, it was about being a very slow follower.

The leadership on pay cuts came from the private sector. 

From Chief Executives to those on the factory floor or behind the wheel of the delivery truck, people have been taking pay cuts for at least two weeks, if not three.

Remember the bosses at Mainfreight and Fletcher Building, not to mention Air New Zealand taking their big cuts? 

They were doing it because their company income is going to drop dramatically. 

Well guess what? The big company called New Zealand Inc is going to have its income slashed by billions this year too as the tax take falls well short of what it was last year. 

That means the government workers should be just like the rest of us and take a paycut too. 

Leadership from the Prime Minister would have been joining that trend two weeks ago, not yesterday, and not after constant badgering from the media and the Taxpayers’ Union.

A fair point that the decision did lag the private sector and only came after a concerted campaign.

There are vast swathes of the public service who are not doing much at the moment, and the pay rates should be adjusted as such. Or at least a firm stake should be put in the ground to say no public sector pay increases this year. 

There’ll be virtually none in the private sector.

And if the Prime Minister and Cabinet are taking a cut, why not the rest of the MPs? It can’t be that hard to arrange. 

 Under the emergency powers the government has at the moment, arranging a pay cut for 120 MPs should be really easy. 

Very easy.