Pay disparity a thorny issue

BERNA Joan Collier was appointed a judge of the Federal Court of Australia on Feb 8, 2006.
She has written widely on insolvency and commercial law and medico-legal practice and has taught commercial law at the Queensland University of Technology.
Last Thursday, she was appointed a judge of the National and Supreme courts of Papua New Guinea.
John Alexander Logan, another Queensland-based Federal Court judge was appointed a judge of the National and Supreme courts at the same time.
He was appointed to the Federal Court on Sept 27, 2007. He has served on the administrative appeals tribunal and on the Australian Defence Force discipline appeal. He holds a bachelor of economics and a bachelor of law from the University of Queensland.
The two Federal Court judges will have their workload cut out for them. They join a team of dedicated and hard-working judges who have been inundated with work for years.
The local judges will welcome the experience and the extra pair of minds.
Their three-year term will indeed be busy but the unexplained question is whether they are brought here under the just revived Enhanced Cooperation Programme or whether they are being engaged by the government of PNG.
We raise the question because the remuneration packages between judges of the Federal Court in Australia and PNG are vastly different. Those serving in Australia are on superior pay packages.
The salary packages alone would run into more than A$348,000 per annum plus lucrative gratuity and other perks. Converted to PNG kina, the salary package alone would double or triple that amount.
They join pre-eminent colleagues who are being remunerated under the PNG Salaries and Conditions Monitoring Committee conditions. Even expatriate judges such as Woods, the late Hincliffe, Sheehan, Ellis and Doherty are on local salaries.
As serving judges of the Federal Court of Australia, Collier and Logan leave behind remunerations that are vastly superior to that of their PNG counterparts or, if they are to be compensated in PNG on the same level, they would throw the entire salary structure way off kilter.
This is the unexplained factor in the engagement which may require some airing to avoid confusion and a return to that terribly emotive and nasty debates of the 70s, 80s and 90s pertaining to dual salaries.
The policy of dual salaries was particularly emotive because it was seen as a legacy of PNG’s colonial masters in Australia.
The policy was justified before the 1970s because the expatriate workforce was more qualified than nationals.
That justification is no longer relevant in many cases and the judicial precinct would be one area.
Today, employment must be on merit and there must be universal rewards right across the board, except extras such as accommodation, dislocation and,
perhaps, hardship allowances.
PNG is already finding it difficult to adjust to the high salary rates set by the liquefied natural gas project in many fields.
An off-balance remunerative structure in the judiciary will be most uncomfortable to live with or to justify to serving judges in Papua New Guinea – both national and expatriate.
Even if under the ECP and the two federal judges continued to be remunerated by the Australian government, it would not still be right for PNG judges.
The workplace is the same, the workload is the same but the pays are vastly different.
That said, it seems sad that after 36 years of Independence, PNG is once again importing judges from Australia.
Are there no more suitable PNG citizens practising law in the country who are eligible?
The last leadership
tribunal for Sir Michael Somare saw three imported judges making decisions which seemed to
leave as many questions unanswered as answered.
Cases before the court such as the special Supreme Court reference, where a decision is due on Friday, might be straight forward matters of legal interpretation but the general populace will always be uncomfortable if the judges were expatriate who made decisions affecting important political events.