GREED IS GOOD!

An OECD report issued in December last year showed that New Zealand has one of the fastest growing income gaps in the OECD. The gap between wage and salary earners and the top CEO executives has grown ever wider. And we tax the rich less and tax the poor more. Christchurch City Council CEO Tony Marryatt is doing his bit to expand that income gap.

If Christchurch City Council CEO Tony Marryatt wants to be greedy than, at least, he should not insult us all by trying to justify his venal and grasping philosophy. If he wants to be a greedy then he should have the decency to own up to it. If he wants to stick his nose in the trough and chow down at our expense please don't tell us that he's doing it for us. 'I'll have another two dozen cream cakes,' says Tony. 'But I'm only going to eat them because I'm committed to Christchurch'. Yeah, right.

'Greed is good' said Wall Street shark Gordon Gekko. Come on, Tony - stop bullshitting us and admit you've got a poster of Gordon Gekko on your bedroom wall.

Marryatt must have the same gormless media advisor as Mayor Sideshow Bob or Councillor Sue Wells because he has tried to defend the indefensible. And its like watching a car crash in slow motion.

He says he's worth another $68,000 because 'he's never worked so hard in his life'. He then goes on to bemoan that he hasn't a weekend off in nine weeks.

These remarks have only served to further infuriate the good people of Christchurch and you don't need to be a genius to work out why.

For a start workers in New Zealand are being screwed to work harder for less. Workers are being given wage increases that don't even compensate for the rise in the cost of living.

Indeed in 2010 Christchurch City Council own workforce received a derisory low wage increase of 2.75 percent. I would expect most of these workers are working harder now than at any stage in their council careers - will they be getting a 14.5 percent salary increase like Marryatt's? I don't think so.

So its another $68,000 for Marryatt and peanuts for the workforce he presides over.

Marryatt's self-serving justification for his greed is a smack in the face of the good people of Christchurch, many of whom are struggling to simply survive after a series of devastating earthquakes. So Marryatt has had to work nine weekends in a row. Does he really think this will garner public sympathy?

A wealthy CEO crying about life being a bitch is not about to resonate with people struggling to make ends meet.

He should get out into the quake wrecked eastern suburbs and see what people are going through everyday. There's no pot of cash at the end of their rainbows. There isn't even a rainbow. Just destroyed houses, empty and damaged streets and uncertain futures.

I doubt though that Marryatt has any real comprehension of what people are going through - a far as I'm aware, he's never even been seen in the Eastside.

Indeed if Marryatt is doing such a fantastic job, as his political allies claim, then why - after nearly 15 months - are the eastern suburbs still a place of devastation and where people are still being treated as second class citizens and are now being fobbed off with picnics and egg and spoon races?