EDITORIAL: How many ministers is too many?

Paul Taggart
It's that time again - the troughs in Wellington have been re-charged and Members of Parliament are set to dine.
For Prime Minister Helen Clark, the latest Remuneration Authority pay increase will mean an extra $12,000 a year, taking her total to $317,000, with perks adding $100,000 to that amount.
Cabinet ministers, including Hawke's Bay's own Rick Barker, will pocket an additional $8000, taking their salaries to $203,000, plus extensive perks.
Backbench MPs - and there aren't many on Labour's team, as all but five of 50 are associate ministers, under- secretaries or select committee chairman or chairwomen - will get an extra $3000, taking their base salary up to $113,000.
The fact that the number of ministers continues to grow, as do the number, and pay, of their flunkies, is an abuse.
If it helps a prime minister quieten rebellious backbenchers, they can be made cabinet ministers or associate secretaries, and the bill sent to taxpayers.
It is not the amount of Helen Clark's salary that is the real issue: The appointment of unnecessary ministers, associate ministers and under-secretaries is the issue that has long required addressing.
The problem is that the people with the power to address it, politicians, are the same people who benefit financially from such abuses, therefore it is unlikely to change any time soon.
Take man-of-the-moment John Tamihere, who has been relieved of his cabinet responsibilities (but not his minister's salary) because of golden handshake and tax issues.
Surely the country will grind to a halt. After all, Mr Tamihere was Minister of Youth Affairs, Minister of Statistics, Minister for Land Information, Minister for Small Business, Associate Minister of Maori Affairs and Associate Minister of Commerce.
What a workload he must have had. Surely he earned every cent of his $203,000, plus perks.
Yeah right. When he returned to Auckland his colleagues simply dished out the titles between them, as, in reality, there was very little actual work involved.
For example, what does the Minister for Statistics do? An old British comedy show had a character with the fictitious title of Minister of Administrative Affairs. Is that really any dafter than Minister of Statistics?
There are other gems: Why, for example, do we have an Associate Minister of Pacific Island Affairs? Having a Minister of Pacific Island Affairs is questionable (why not a Minister of British Affairs, or Chinese Affairs?), but why an associate, too?
Then there is Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, Minister of Broadcasting and, probably the daftest of all, Minister of Racing.
It would be funny if it wasn't so wasteful. Every time another backbencher pulls up a chair at the cabinet table, his or her salary increases by almost $100,000 and the perks increase, too.
Over one term the money wasted on each of those superfluous ministers would be more than enough to build and equip a couple of State houses. During the current Government's tenure there would easily have been enough to build a decent-sized housing estate.
Isn't that the way a Labour Government should be using taxpayers' money, not using it to line the pockets of politicians?