‘Ridiculous’: Martin Bosley slams MPs’ pay

Celebrity chef and councillor Martin Bosley says South Wairarapa elected councillors are working “ridiculous” jobs but are being paid less than the minimum wage.

Although the borough’s mayor has been effectively excluded from council, he still receives a salary of more than $100,000 a year.

Elected councillors’ salaries will increase from July 1, but South Wairarapa councillors will still be paid the lowest wages in New Zealand.

The minimum allowable salary for a South Wairarapa City councillor is $19,553.

Bosley said as South Wairarapa MP he worked between 20 and 35 hours a week, which meant he was paid less than $10 an hour.

Worse, he said, his company lost about $60,000 last year because of the time he put into running for office.

“When I first ran for council, I had no idea I could get paid,” Bosley said.

“I thought it was a community event. The motivation for the campaign was never about money.”

“But the workload and pay are too low, below the minimum wage.”

The pace of dealing with parliamentary issues across New Zealand is “very slow”, which makes him question whether he is “using his time wisely” as an elected member of parliament.

“But we do it because we believe in it and we care about and love our community.”

South Wairarapa Mayor Martin Connelly said it was “fair to say elected councillors are not being paid fairly if they are doing a reasonable job”.

Earlier this year, his committee voted to Removed him from a number of positions and committeeswhich is another move following last year’s no-confidence vote.

Councillors also formed a committee of the whole called the Strategic Working Committee, chaired by Deputy Mayor Melissa Sadler-Foot, to deal with major council business, in addition to tax rates and other issues that can only be dealt with at council meetings.

Three full council meetings this year have been cancelled due to “lack of business”.

Connolly said that despite being relieved of some of his duties, he still “spends 40 hours a week, if not more, doing my job as mayor.”

“I’m not going to sit there and do nothing,” he said.

“I would say that while there are some things I used to do that I don’t do anymore, a lot of them weren’t very time consuming and they were more taken up by other things.”

He said the formula for elected members’ remuneration drawn up by the Remuneration Authority was “interesting”.

The Pay Authority recently told Local Democracy Report that the new pay scales were determined by a system that ranks local councils based on population, total assets, total expenditure, a socio-economic deprivation index and a complex weighting process. The pay scales are also aligned with the public sector.

A Salaries of MPs Of that, the Chatham Islands received $14,274, while Christchurch and Auckland received more than $100,000.

But South Wairarapa MP Alistair Plimmer said there were “fundamental faults” with the Local Government Act, including the way salaries were set.

“We are clearly too small to do this job… The whole system is built for a bygone era.

He said for small regions like South Wairarapa, people with talent were missing out because of low wages.

He also said the pay gap between the mayor and deputy mayor was too large.

Bosley agreed, saying the deputy mayor is “basically doing the job of the mayor.”

The deputy mayor of South Wairarapa is paid $37,255.

Bosley said councillors also took over duties removed by the mayor “without additional compensation”.

“We do take this responsibility on ourselves, but on the other hand, we cannot trust the people who hold these positions.”

LDR is a local news organisation jointly funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.