The dark arts of setting public service salaries

Spokesperson for the NZ Super Fund board, welcome. My pleasure. You’ve just awarded the CEO of the NZ Super Fund a salary package of over a million dollars. How did you calculate that?

We thought of a number and doubled it.

Really?

No, that would be ridiculous. What we really did is thought of a number that’s the same as a senior charge nurse’s salary, then we doubled it, then we doubled it again, then we doubled it again, then we added on half as much again, then we rounded it up.

And I’m sure there are very good reasons for that. It must be a highpressured job, running the NZ Super Fund.

It is, but frankly it’s not up there with cardiac surgery is it – where, like a god, you can hold the beating heart of a human being and the power of life over death in the palm of your hand.

That is a pretty high-pressure job.

It’d certainly make me wear brown trousers on a daily basis. And hey, those cutters do make a decent salary from the public purse. But nothing like we pay the head of the Super Fund.

I suppose you take into account that running the NZ Super Fund requires a lot of expertise.

Yes, but so does being a university professor. I mean those people are serious swots. Decades with their head in a book. Worldclass experts on the physiology of ammonites or somesuch. And yet for the kind of money we’re paying our man you could buy – how many people in a Rugby Sevens team? Seven.

About seven of them.

Well I suppose you could say that the decisions of the head of the NZ Super Fund affect more people than the decisions of your average university professor.

True, but if you go down that way of thinking, who’s that fella who’s always on the news talking about the economy and taxes and hospitals and schools?

The Prime Minister?

Him. His decisions affect a fair few people but he earns south of $500K, which on an annualised basis is what our man earns before lunch-time.

Is there, then, some distasteful aspect of running the NZ Super Fund that warrants you awarding such high remuneration?

Nothing compared to wiping people’s arses in retirement homes, and we all know what a money-spinner that is.

Well if it’s not that, and it’s not the pressure, or the expertise, or the effect on people’s lives, what is it? It’s those people over there. Who are they?

They’re private sector CEOs. And why do they earn so much? Because they point at each other and say ‘‘Look how much he earns. I want that much’’.

How does that work?

Nobody knows. It’s like Mike Hoskings’ ratings.

You mean?

A mystery.

Should a public service boss be paid the same as a private sector CEO anyway?

Is that the time? I have to go. Well thank you, it’s been an informative three minutes.

Or as we call it at the rates we pay, 20 bucks.