While the Coalition has blamed excessive salaries for taking down Holden, we know how Tony Abbott himself felt when he was given a pay cut in 2007, writes Annabel Crabb.

Subjectivity in the human brain is a marvellous thing, and nowhere is it more richly observed than in the matter of comparative value for money.

"I am underpaid," is how the universal conjugation of comparative remuneration begins. "YOU are fairly recompensed. But HE is taking the piss."

And so, this week, as the Parliament brawls its way toward Christmas like a gaggle of Friday-night office workers, several strains of thought emerge as to what constitutes a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.

Treasurer Joe Hockey - who has decidedly pro-market and anti-protectionist inclinations and on the matter of the Australian car industry is temporarily being allowed to indulge them - made it pretty clear yesterday that he blames the overpayment of automotive workers for the economic troubles that have since claimed the scalp of Holden.

"And why are we in a position today where the third manufacturer, Holden, is refusing to confirm it is around for the long term, even though there is an additional $1 billion on the table?" the Treasurer demanded in Question Time.

"I will tell you why. It is because the Labor Party has made it so damn hard to make anything in Australia. Labour costs are one great example."

Mr Hockey recommended that if Labor wanted to give the automotive industry its best chance of survival, it should immediately encourage Toyota workers to accept the cost-cutting package that company is currently offering.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-11/crabb-tony-abbott-pay-cuts/5149342

Abbott may have taken a pay cut at some stage (2007?) but he made up for making the taxpayers pay for his "charitable" pedalling ever since... and being the worse prime minister ever ever had... FULL STOP.

By Bob Ellis

THE ABBOTTITE HERESY grows not just wickeder but crazier by the day.

We are now told we can afford eight dollars a week to save the health funds but not ten dollars a year to save the auto industry and the fifty thousand jobs that feed it, and the hundred thousand of kids and their mothers that need it to continue.

We are told we need many naval vessels to turn back boats to nowhere, but none to save whales from their predators — a single unarmed plane will be sufficient.

We are told that all disabled people are deserving, but some are more deserving than others and the less deserving will be sentenced to hard labour.

We are told that all Indigenous people are deserving, but if they want to prove it, they must pay for their own lawyers.

This is nothing like Menzies liberalism or even Howard conservatism — it is something new. It is the wolf coming down on the fold, seeking whom he may devour.

First on the list is children — the crippled, the autistic, the language-challenged. They will not get what Gonski ordered but what Pyne sadistically, crazily, changeably preferred to lash them with.

Next comes the women. They must now look after their disabled mothers and pay, somehow, for their kids’ textbooks and shoes out of budgets dwindling daily as rents rise, jobs vanish and uni fees go up. They must now seek extra work and hardly see their kids at all.

None of this is necessary.

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-dark-ages,6021