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Newly-elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been rewarded with a 40 per cent pay rise for his new role, with his ministers now being paid huge six-figure salaries.
The Labor leader will see his salary jump to $549,250, a big rise from his $390,813 salary as Opposition leader.
Deputy PM 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 be on $396,094 to manage Australia’s government debt, as it approaches $1trillion.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong is getting $369,688 as a cabinet minister balancing being Leader of Government Business in the Senate and dealing with China’s aggression.
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, a former Australian Capital Territory chief minister, will be paid $364,406.
Their stroke of good fortune comes as the typical Australian worker suffers a pay cut in real terms because of soaring inflation and $2-a-litre petrol prices.
New Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is set to receive a 40 per cent pay rise as the typical Australian worker suffers a pay cut because of soaring inflation (he is pictured left with Governor-General David Hurley on Monday)
Australia’s most five senior cabinet ministers, sworn in on Monday, are paid at least four times Australia’s average, full-time salary of $90,917 under terms dictated by the independent Remuneration Tribunal.
Labor is likely to have a bare majority in the House of Representatives, with Saturday’s election occurring just three days after official data revealed wages in the year to March rose by just 2.4 per cent.
That was less than half Australia’s headline inflation rate of 5.1 per cent during the same period, which was the fastest pace of consumer price increases in 21 years, Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed.
This meant most workers effectively suffered a pay cut as their wages failed to keep pace with price increases, with average petrol prices now back above $2 a litre despite a six-month halving of the fuel excise to 22.1 cents a litre in the March 29 budget.
Mr Albanese during the election ‘absolutely’ promised he would support the Fair Work Commission if it gave a 5.1 per cent rise to minimum wage earners.
Australia’s most powerful cabinet ministers are far from the best paid government executives with Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe on a $1,076,029 remuneration package.
The Labor leader (centre) will see his salary jump to $549,250 – a big rise from his $390,813 salary as Opposition Leader. Deputy PM Richard Marles (second right) is receiving $433,063. Treasurer Jim Chalmers (far left) will be on $396,094. Foreign Minister Penny Wong (second, left) is getting $369,688 as a cabinet minister balancing being Leader of Government Business in the Senate. Finance Minister Katy Gallagher (far right) will receive $364,406
Australia Post’s former acting chief executive Rodney Boys, who briefly filled in following the colourful departure of Christine Holgate, was on a $1,871,932 remuneration package.
Members of Parliament are paid a base salary of $211,250 but if they lose their seat, they are entitled to a payout of 12 weeks’ pay or $48,750.
Governor-General David Hurley on Monday swore in a five-member interim cabinet so Mr Albanese could attend the Quad, or Quadrilateral Strategic Dialogue, in Tokyo with his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida, India PM Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden.
The group was formed to counter China’s territorial aggression in Asia, especially in the South China Sea.
Mr Albanese’s swearing in as PM, just two days after the election is unusually rapid.
It is even faster than Gough Whitlam’s swearing in as Labor PM on December 5, 1972 – just three days after the election that ended 23 unbroken years of Coalition rule.
For the next fortnight, he was a PM with 10 other portfolios as he ran Australia with his deputy Lance Barnard as part of a two-man ‘Duumvirate’.
In 2022, the two most senior members of the five interim cabinet ministers have separated from another Labor politician.
Mr Albanese’s estranged wife Carmel Tebbutt was New South Wales deputy premier from 2008 to 2011 and they simultaneously held the overlapping federal and state seats of Grayndler and Marrickville in Sydney’s inner west (she is pictured campaigning in the Labor seat of Barton in Sydney’s south with NSW Labor leader Chris Minns)
Mr Albanese’s estranged wife Carmel Tebbutt was New South Wales deputy premier from 2008 to 2011 and they simultaneously held the overlapping federal and state seats of Grayndler and Marrickville in Sydney’s inner west.
Mr Marles is the former husband of Victorian police minister Lisa Neville.
They hold the adjacent federal and state seat seats of Corio and Bellarine on either side of Geelong, south-west of Melbourne.
Mr Chalmers is the husband of Laura Chalmers, a Courier-Mail journalist in Brisbane previously known as Laura Anderson who was Senator Wong’s media adviser when she was climate change and later finance minister under Labor PMs Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.
Like his boss Mr Albanese, he had been a political staffer before being elected to Parliament, previously serving as former treasurer and deputy prime minister Wayne Swan’s chief of staff.
The Prime Minister had been a research officer for left-wing federal Labor minister Tom Uren during the 1980s when Bob Hawke was Labor PM.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles (right) is the former husband of Victorian police minister Lisa Neville
WHY THE GREENS ARE ANTHONY ALBANESE’S BIGGEST JOB THREAT
Anthony Albanese’s gentrified Sydney inner west seat of Grayndler overlaps with the state Greens seat of Newtown
The Prime Minister was re-elected with a comfortable 67.6 per cent to 32.4 per cent two-party margin over his Greens rival Rachael Jacobs, who ran with the minor party in Brisbane at the 2013 federal election after being a Democrats Senate and state election candidate in New South Wales
But federal electorates in Melbourne, Brisbane and possible Byron Bay that overlap with Greens state seats are now in danger of falling to the minor party if the local member doesn’t have a strong personal following
The Greens on Saturday picked up former Labor PM Kevin Rudd’s old inner-Brisbane seat of Griffith – with incumbent ALP member Terri Butler humiliatingly coming third in first preference votes
The Greens on Saturday picked up former Labor PM Kevin Rudd’s old inner-Brisbane seat of Griffith – with incumbent ALP member Terri Butler (pictured with Anthony Albanese) humiliatingly coming third in first preference votes
Max Chandler-Mather has a 57.9 per cent margin over the Liberal Party’s Olivia Roberts’s 42.1 per cent, Australian Electoral Commission returns show
Griffith also overlaps with the state Greens seat of South Brisbane, previously held by former Queensland Labor premiers Anna Bligh and Vince Gair and until 2020, former deputy premier Jackie Trad
The Greens are in with a chance in the Brisbane inner-west seat of Ryan, with Liberal incumbent Julian Simmonds leading by just 50.7 per cent to the minor party’s Elizabeth Watson-Brown on 42.1 per cent
Ryan, only ever won by the Liberal Party at a general election since its creation in 1949, overlaps with the Greens state seat of Maiwar – the new name for Indooroopilly which had previously been a Liberal seat until former minister Scott Emerson lost the new electorate in 2017 and became a radio 4BC drive presenter
The Greens on Saturday picked up former Labor PM Kevin Rudd’s old inner-Brisbane seat of Griffith. Max Chandler-Mather (pictured) has a 57.9 per cent margin over the Liberal Party’s Olivia Roberts’s 42.1 per cent
Labor is in danger in the Melbourne seat of Macnamara, covering St Kilda, with incumbent Josh Burns on 32.3 per cent of the primary vote, only marginally ahead of the Greens candidate Steph Hogkins-May on 30 per cent, which means Liberal Party preferences will decide the winner
Labor for the first time ever picked up the seat of Higgins, in Melbourne’s inner east, from the Liberal Party
But the electorate of former treasurer Peter Costello and former Liberal prime ministers Harold Holt and John Gorton overlaps with the state Greens seat of Prahran
Greens leader Adam Bandt has held the seat of Melbourne since 2010 and it is the electorate of former Labor leader Arthur Calwell, a proponent of the white Australia policy, and former finance minister Lindsay Tanner
It overlaps with the state seat of Melbourne held by deputy leader Ellen Sandell
The Greens are in with a chance in the Brisbane inner-west seat of Ryan, with Liberal incumbent Julian Simmonds leading by just 50.7 per cent to the minor party’s Elizabeth Watson-Brown (centre) on 42.1 per cent
Mr Albanese and former Labor deputy leader Tanya Plibersek, the Member for Sydney, hold electorates that overlap with the Greens state seats of Newtown and Balmain
Labor also holds the seat of Richmond, covering Byron Bay in the far north of New South Wales, which overlaps with the state Greens seat of Ballina
Sitting member Justine Elliot is on 28.7 per cent of the primary vote, after suffering a 3 per cent swing against her, while Greens candidate Mandy Nolan is second on 25.1 per cent, ahead of The Nationals candidate Kimberly Hone on 24.2 per cent
Three generations of the Anthony family – Hubert, former deputy PM Doug and Larry – had held the seat for the Country and National parties but a demographic seat change has gentrified the farming electorate
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