Mike's Minute: We don't need as many councillors or MPs

We have a lot to thank Jamie Arbuckle for. 

Jamie is a Marlborough councillor and an MP for New Zealand First. 

He is this week's political headline because he has two jobs and two salaries and has, for now, decided to keep all of them. 

We thank him because it proves without a shadow of a doubt that one, if not two of these jobs aren't actual jobs as you and I might know them. Thus, it allows him to do what he calls, and the system calls, two jobs for salaries and seemingly not work himself into an early grave. 

At council level, as well as being a regular councillor, he is also on the Economic Finance Committee, which is extra work and extra money. 

In Parliament, of course he is a hard-working MP, deputy chair of the Justice Select Committee as well as being on the Finance and Expenditure Committee and he is also the party whip. 

It is possible these are proper, full time, energy-sapping, time filling jobs and Jamie is superhuman and has skills few, if any others, possess and he works 18 or 19 hours a day. 

Or they are not real jobs. 

The council especially, as in so many council jobs around the country, is a make-work scheme for well-meaning and/or bored people. 

We are over councilled, over regulated and, as such, we have too many Jamie's wandering around pretending they do things. 

The arrival of MMP has badly exposed the work, or lack of work, required to be a list MP. You represent no one and you are answerable only to your party. If you are a Prime Minister or a Cabinet minister you can argue less electorate and more important work of national significance can be justified. Although you will note that many don’t. Jacinda Ardern, Chris Luxon, as well as John Key and Helen Clark all were/are electorate MPs. 

It's not about the money. In the grand scheme of things, he might earn a quarter of a million for a couple of jobs. 

The point is they aren't proper jobs. We know that now because he can sit on several committees, be a whip, commute between two cities, collect two salaries, represent a lot of people and still not claim to be part of that absurd survey last week that says most of us suffer severe burn out. 

The lesson is we don’t need nearly as many councillors as we have and we certainly don’t need as many MPs. 

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