Every day the Brumby ALP government in Victoria is looking more and more like the worst parts of John Howard’s shameful administration. Yesterday the head of the Transport Ticketing Authority, Vivian Miners, resigned from his job by “mutual consent” with the transport minister, Lynne Kosky. Miners is responsible for the smartcard ticketing debacle that is hideously over-budget and three years overdue, and in a completely unrelated coincidence he was due this morning to give evidence at a parliamentary committee investigating his apparent conflict of interest during the smartcard tendering process. This is the kind of accountability and transparency that John Howard was famous for.

But his resignation has highlighted the ridiculous salary that Miners was being paid: $545,000. That makes made him the highest paid public servant in the State, and it’s more money than John Surname earns in a year. How can we possibly justify such an astronomical salary for somebody whose job, while important, is to oversee only one aspect of one portfolio of the entire government? If over half a million dollars is justified for the head of the public transport ticketing division then why isn’t the Premier on at least double that figure? And since I can bring my classroom photocopying in under-budget every term why aren’t I paid as much as Vivian Miners is was?