Speaking Fees – What’s the bill for Bill?
Bill English has stepped down from his post as leader of the National Party, and while we’ll leave the chatter about who’ll lead the blue team for another piece, we here at M2 are curious in hearing what Bill’s plans are after politics.
Life after leaving the political arena can take politicians down many different paths. Tony Blair worked with investment bank JP Morgan Chase after his tenure as British PM. Al Gore went on to champion efforts against global warming and climate change. John Key took up positions at Air New Zealand and BNZ as Chairman and Director respectively.
Utilising an existing skill-set is a great strategy for anyone looking to move into a new role. Part of being a politician is being an excellent orator, so it’s no wonder plenty of the aforementioned have gone on to have speaking careers. Here’s a list of some big names and the speaking fees they fetch:
John Howard – $40,000
John Key – $40,000
Al Gore – $100,000
George W Bush – $175,000
Hillary Clinton – $225,000
Tony Blair – $300,000
Barack Obama – $400,000
Bill Clinton – $500,000
Ronald Reagan – $1 million
That begs the question – what’s the Bill for Bill?
While there are plenty of different variables in calculating a speaking fee, including position, number of years served, popularity etc, we can use John Key as the yardstick. Here’s a (rough) formula we’ve come up with:
Take John’s $40,000 speaking fee and divide it by the number years he was PM – $40,000 / 8 years = $5,000.
Bill English, on the other hand, was PM for 317 days or 0.87 years. Multiply that by the factor of 5,000 we discerned from John Key, and you get:
$4350.
Well, then. While it might not seem like a massively flattering number at first, let’s remember that’s per speaking engagement.
Let’s say Bill was to speak twice a week – 4350 x 2 = $8700.
And then let’s say he did that over the course of a year – $8700 x 52 = $452,400.
Not bad. That’s $139,413 more than if he stayed as Opposition Leader ($312,987).
Speaking twice a week seems like a pretty chilled out life, leaving a lot of time for Bill to spend time with his family in Dipton and make a couple of pineapple and spaghetti pizzas here and there.
