The Woeful Inadequacies of a Minister

Yesterday, Prime Minister Helen Clark sought to deflect criticism of Maori Affairs Minister Parekura Horomia by accusing officials of giving him 'woeful' advice.

Libertarianz spokesman Robert Palmer notes with amusement that a Minister may not recognise 'woeful' advice when he sees it, yet still retains Clark's confidence.

"Clearly, Clark is the same as Shipley when it comes to accountability over ministerial failure," he says, "Woeful!" "Libertarianz have long identified government ministers as overpaid beneficiaries, but Horomia sets a new low," continues Palmer. "

A long time ago, Clark should have asked the Minister if it is moral to take the sort of money that he does, given his ongoing non-performance. A minister who earns more than $2,000 every week, but can't do a job done by thousands of managers every day, is not a person fit to supervise the spending of large dollops of other people's money," says Palmer.

Palmer suggests with a grin that Libertarianz would, in fact, have all Members of Parliament as volunteers.

"A good first step in preparation for the all-volunteer parliament would be to reduce Ministers' wages to the average wage immediately, and that of all other members to a percentage of this. Apart from the obvious tax savings, Ministers with less income might spend more time looking for woeful advice in briefing papers, rather than on spending their ill-gotten gains."

He notes the argument that 'if you pay peanuts then you just get monkeys' but asks, "isn't that what we have now already - a whole chamber full of woefully unemployable primates?"

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