The Independent Remuneration Tribunal is ruling a 2% pay rise to politicians.

Liberal Senator David Leyonhjelm has slammed the decision, saying politicians shouldn’t receive a raise until they bring the budget back into the surplus.

“Generally speaking, if you perform well, you deliver high productivity… that should be the basis for a pay rise,” he tells Ross Greenwood.

Senator Leyonhjelm raises the question of how do you judge the productivity and performance of a politician.

“You can certainly judge them by negative factors, sometimes you can judge them by positive factors.

“But a negative is not balancing the budget, spending more money than is coming in.”

Listen to the full interview below