Debnam Blogs!

That’s right, it’s a REAL LIVE BLOG this time, conveniently hosted by the Daily Telegraph. I’m not sure whether it’s an ongoing arrangement, but unlike his previous efforts to “blogâ€? the Get Back In Front Bogan Whistlestop Tour, Debnam’s Tele blog has a COMMENTS FACILITY.

With an absolute lack of rhetorical flair and scant respect for grammatical construction, Debnam or his overpaid ghost blogger has chosen Iemma Was There as the subject of his inaugural post. Which is particularly boring, as I’m perfectly aware of Iemma’s ministerial experience, so more interesting to me were the promises that Debnam made about his management strategy as Premier:

My Ministers will be put on performance pay – if they fail to deliver on their targets they will not be paid their full salary. My Ministers will also work 5 days a year in the front line of service delivery in their portfolios.

Now, I’d heard that Deb’s Iron Party was proposing a performance component to ministerial pay in a bid to woo an electorate ravaged by WorkChoices, but what I didn’t realise was that according to NSW Liberal Policy [pdf] he is actually planning to reduce the ministerial base salary by 50% and link the remainder of the current entitlement to KPIs “agreed between the Minister and the Premier at the time of appointmentâ€?.

The official media release to this policy goes on to say that half of Debnam’s own salary will be based upon the achievement of these KPIs by his ministers, a bold plan when you consider that this means Le Deb would be required to take a salary dock if the Queen Mary unexpectedly caused a traffic jam.

At the end of the year, the policy states that the withheld “performanceâ€? component of the current base salary will be paid out in a massive lump sum, leaving plenty of money for alcohol and hookers around the Christmas period, which should work well for both the media and the opposition if the sort of mentality that leads idiot candidates to send group text messages about goat secks to their political colleagues ends up prevailing in Government.

Le Deb’s second blog-based “policyâ€?, that ministers would work 5 days per year in the “front line of service deliveryâ€?, brings up images of Le Deb on the road in a police car booking P-Platers and cracking down on jay-walking. I really wonder what he means by this, and whether these days “on the front lineâ€? count towards the performance pay “bonusâ€? – does the shadow minister for the environment have the appropriate talent and expertise in seal culling? Would the shadow minister for gaming lose his pay if he failed to achieve the KPI in cleaning vomit out of poker machine trays and doing the badge draw?

I look forward to this, and am almost tempted to vote Liberal for the rich schadenfreude experience it would offer me.