Newly elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been rewarded with a 40 per cent pay rise for his new role, with his ministers now receiving huge six-figure salaries.
The Labor leader will see his salary rise to $549,250, a big increase on his $390,813 salary as Opposition Leader.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, who is now acting Prime Minister with his boss in Tokyo, is on a very attractive package of $433,063.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers will have $396,094 to manage Australia’s public debt, which is approaching $1 trillion.
The Labor leader (centre) will see his salary rise to $549,250, a big increase on his salary of $390,813 as opposition leader. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles (second right) will receive $433,063. Treasurer Jim Chalmers (far left) will receive $396,094. Foreign Minister Penny Wong (second, left) will receive $369,688 as a cabinet minister, balancing her role as Government Affairs Leader in the Senate. Finance Minister Katy Gallagher (far right) will receive $364,406
Foreign Minister Penny Wong will receive $369,688 as a cabinet minister, balancing being leader of government affairs in the Senate and dealing with China’s aggression.
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, former chief minister of the Australian Capital Territory, will receive $364,406.
Their stroke of good fortune comes as the typical Australian worker suffers a real-terms pay cut due to rising inflation and $2-a-litre petrol prices.
Australia’s top five cabinet ministers, who were sworn in on Monday, receive at least four times Australia’s average full-time salary of $90,917, under terms handed down by the independent Remuneration Tribunal.
Labor is likely to have a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives, with Saturday’s election coming just three days after official data revealed wages in the year to March rose just 2.4 per cent.
New Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will receive a 40 per cent pay rise as the typical Australian worker takes a pay cut due to rising inflation (left, with Governor-General David Hurley, on Monday).
That was less than half Australia’s headline inflation rate of 5.1 per cent over the same period, which was the fastest pace of consumer price growth in 21 years, Bureau of Statistics data showed. from Australia.
This meant that most workers effectively suffered a pay cut as their wages could not keep pace with price increases, with average petrol prices now above $2 per liter despite a reduction to halve fuel duty in six months to 22.1 cents per liter in the March 29 budget. .
During the election, Albanese “absolutely” promised he would support the Fair Work Commission if it gave a 5.1 per cent rise to workers earning the minimum wage.
Australia’s most powerful cabinet ministers are far from the highest-paid government executives: NBNCo chief executive Stephen Rue paid $2,647,974 to roll out the National Broadband Network.
Last year, Snowy Hydro director Paul Broad was paid $2,249,978 in incentives.
Former Australia Post interim chief executive Rodney Boys, who briefly held the role following the colorful departure of Christine Holgate, has received a pay package of $1,871,932.
Australian Rail Track Corporation CEO Mark Campbell earns $1,186,727, putting him ahead of Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe’s $1,076,029 remuneration package.
Departmental secretaries also earn more than cabinet ministers, with Prime Minister and Cabinet chief Phil Gaetjens earning $944,829, although he is expected to be replaced by Labor who consider him too closely aligned with the Liberal Party.
Greg Moriarty receives $963,428 as Secretary of the Department of Defense, but the head of the Defense Forces, Angus Campbell, receives even more: $1,034,315.
Treasury Chief Steven Kennedy earns $922,022, ahead of Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo at $912,422 and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Kathryn Campbell at $874,288, based on the salary of his predecessor, Frances Adamson, before she was appointed governor of South Australia last year. .
Members of Parliament receive a base salary of $211,250, but if they lose their seat, they are entitled to a payment of 12 weeks’ salary or $48,750.
Governor General David Hurley on Monday swore in a five-member interim Cabinet so Albanese could attend the Quad, or Quadrilateral Strategic Dialogue, in Tokyo with his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and President American, Joe Biden.
Deputy Premier Richard Marles (right) is the ex-husband of Victorian Police Minister Lisa Neville.
The group was formed to counter China’s territorial aggression in Asia, especially in the South China Sea.
Albanese’s swearing-in as prime minister, just two days after the election, is unusually quick.
It’s even quicker than Gough Whitlam’s swearing-in as Labor prime minister on December 5, 1972, just three days after the election that ended 23 uninterrupted years of Coalition government.
For the next fortnight, he was Prime Minister with 10 other portfolios while running Australia with his deputy Lance Barnard as part of a two-man “Duumvirate”.
In 2022, the two most senior members of the five caretaker cabinet ministers parted ways with another Labor politician.
Albanese’s ex-wife, Carmel Tebbutt, was deputy premier of New South Wales from 2008 to 2011 and simultaneously held the overlapping federal and state seats of Grayndler and Marrickville in Sydney’s inner west.
Marles is the ex-husband of Victorian Police Minister Lisa Neville.
They occupy the adjacent federal and state seats of Corio and Bellarine on either side of Geelong, southwest of Melbourne.
Mr Chalmers is the husband of Laura Chalmers, a Courier-Mail journalist in Brisbane formerly known as Laura Anderson, who was a media adviser to Senator Wong when she was climate change and then finance minister under Labor prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.
Like his boss, Mr Albanese, he had been a political staffer before being elected to Parliament, having previously served as former treasurer and chief of staff to Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan.
The Prime Minister had been a research officer for left-wing federal Labor minister Tom Uren during the 1980s, when Bob Hawke was Labor prime minister.