
The APS's march towards $1 million salaries
Successive pay rises have pushed Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Steven Kennedy and Treasury secretary Jenny Wilkinson past the $1 million mark for the 2025-26 financial year, and their colleagues are not far behind.
Dr Kennedy, who is the country's most senior bureaucrat, earns nearly triple the highest rate for United States departmental secretaries, set at $250,600 USD as of January, or about $386,237 AUD.
The march towards million-dollar pay began just over a decade ago, when new legislation returned the power to set senior public service salaries to the Remuneration Tribunal.
While Dr Kennedy plays a role in deciding pay for some of his colleagues, the greatest influence is exerted by the tribunal.
It recommends secretaries be placed in either an upper or lower level of remuneration, and also considers annual pay rises. The figures it decides on include salary, allowances, benefits and superannuation.
In 2011, the tribunal had been concerned for some time that secretary salaries were well below what they should be, and had not kept pace with the rising earnings of their subordinates in the Senior Executive Service.
It recommended an overhaul of the structure used to determine pay for APS bosses, rebasing the uppermost point - the salary of the Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary - to more than $800,000 by mid-2014.
Ten pay rises since 2011 have brought secretary salaries to where they are today.
If the tribunal decides on a 2 per cent pay rise in 2026, without changing the current structure, four more secretaries will rise above the $1 million mark.
This will include the heads of Defence, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Health and Infrastructure.
Two per cent is the lowest pay rise the tribunal has approved since 2011, and public service employees will receive a 3.4 per cent hike in 2026.
While this appears likely given the tribunal's past decisions, it could also decide to hold off.
The tribunal must look at annual wage decisions and also weighs up APS wage increases, consumer price index and wage price index.
In 2020, as the Australian economy faced the COVID-19 pandemic and public sector wages were frozen, the tribunal announced it would not offer a pay rise.
"The Tribunal's primary focus is to provide competitive and equitable remuneration that is appropriate to the responsibilities and experience required of the roles, and that is sufficient to attract and retain people of calibre," it said at the time.
"However, this does not happen in a vacuum. The context of the broader jobs market and the economy are also considered."
The body can also dock a secretary's pay, based on Machinery of Government changes that shrink the scope of their responsibilities, but incumbents are protected from having pay go backwards.
Health secretary Blair Comley has meanwhile received an extra promotion, taking his salary from $910,270 to $983,910, after his department gained oversight of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
While Labor maintains that secretaries' pay is an independent decision, there is room for political intervention.
The tribunal noted in 2020 that it had received a request from then finance minister Mathias Cormann and assistant public service minister Greg Hunt to freeze pay for APS bosses, and opted to comply.
The steady increase has caused concern among some politicians, who earn considerably less than their senior bureacrats.
"They earn more than me," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said when asked about the issue earlier in the year, in reference to his salary of about $622,000.
Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie last year called on Parliament to radically reduce the earnings of senior public servants, capping remuneration at about $430,000 unless otherwise approved by the relevant ministers.
"Departmental secretaries have important responsibilities, and their pay should be appropriate to ensure those positions are competitively filled by capable people," Senator Lambie said at the time.
"But the present levels of pay at the top of the bureaucratic and academic trees don't pass the pub test."
Meanwhile, independent senator David Pocock wants to see the tribunal consider performance in its decisions. The current system is based on the size of departments and the scope and complexity of the portfolio.
"Senior public servants in Australia are paid well above those in most comparable OECD countries, including in Europe, the UK and US," Senator Pocock said.
"We want to be able to attract the best and brightest to lead our public service, but at the same time, we need to ensure remuneration is tied to performance and that is lacking in our current system.
"I would like to see reform in this space as we continue to value and build the capacity of the APS more broadly into the future."
Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher told The Canberra Times in March that while she was sympathetic to the public's concerns, "it's hard to unwind a system that's been put in place over many years".
"I get people's concerns with that, I do," Senator Gallagher said at the time.
"I understand it when they see it in isolation, or relate it back to their own experience of work, but I also know how hard [secretaries work].
"These are serious jobs, and we need the best and brightest, and we need to retain them in the public service."
Already some of the world's best-paid senior public servants, Australia's departmental secretaries are on the brink of earning million-dollar pay packets in the coming years.
Successive pay rises have pushed Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Steven Kennedy and Treasury secretary Jenny Wilkinson past the $1 million mark for the 2025-26 financial year, and their colleagues are not far behind.
Dr Kennedy, who is the country's most senior bureaucrat, earns nearly triple the highest rate for United States departmental secretaries, set at $250,600 USD as of January, or about $386,237 AUD.
The march towards million-dollar pay began just over a decade ago, when new legislation returned the power to set senior public service salaries to the Remuneration Tribunal.
While Dr Kennedy plays a role in deciding pay for some of his colleagues, the greatest influence is exerted by the tribunal.
It recommends secretaries be placed in either an upper or lower level of remuneration, and also considers annual pay rises. The figures it decides on include salary, allowances, benefits and superannuation.
In 2011, the tribunal had been concerned for some time that secretary salaries were well below what they should be, and had not kept pace with the rising earnings of their subordinates in the Senior Executive Service.
It recommended an overhaul of the structure used to determine pay for APS bosses, rebasing the uppermost point - the salary of the Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary - to more than $800,000 by mid-2014.
Ten pay rises since 2011 have brought secretary salaries to where they are today.
If the tribunal decides on a 2 per cent pay rise in 2026, without changing the current structure, four more secretaries will rise above the $1 million mark.
This will include the heads of Defence, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Health and Infrastructure.
Two per cent is the lowest pay rise the tribunal has approved since 2011, and public service employees will receive a 3.4 per cent hike in 2026.
While this appears likely given the tribunal's past decisions, it could also decide to hold off.
The tribunal must look at annual wage decisions and also weighs up APS wage increases, consumer price index and wage price index.
In 2020, as the Australian economy faced the COVID-19 pandemic and public sector wages were frozen, the tribunal announced it would not offer a pay rise.
"The Tribunal's primary focus is to provide competitive and equitable remuneration that is appropriate to the responsibilities and experience required of the roles, and that is sufficient to attract and retain people of calibre," it said at the time.
"However, this does not happen in a vacuum. The context of the broader jobs market and the economy are also considered."
The body can also dock a secretary's pay, based on Machinery of Government changes that shrink the scope of their responsibilities, but incumbents are protected from having pay go backwards.
Health secretary Blair Comley has meanwhile received an extra promotion, taking his salary from $910,270 to $983,910, after his department gained oversight of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
While Labor maintains that secretaries' pay is an independent decision, there is room for political intervention.
The tribunal noted in 2020 that it had received a request from then finance minister Mathias Cormann and assistant public service minister Greg Hunt to freeze pay for APS bosses, and opted to comply.
The steady increase has caused concern among some politicians, who earn considerably less than their senior bureacrats.
"They earn more than me," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said when asked about the issue earlier in the year, in reference to his salary of about $622,000.
Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie last year called on Parliament to radically reduce the earnings of senior public servants, capping remuneration at about $430,000 unless otherwise approved by the relevant ministers.
"Departmental secretaries have important responsibilities, and their pay should be appropriate to ensure those positions are competitively filled by capable people," Senator Lambie said at the time.
"But the present levels of pay at the top of the bureaucratic and academic trees don't pass the pub test."
Meanwhile, independent senator David Pocock wants to see the tribunal consider performance in its decisions. The current system is based on the size of departments and the scope and complexity of the portfolio.
"Senior public servants in Australia are paid well above those in most comparable OECD countries, including in Europe, the UK and US," Senator Pocock said.
"We want to be able to attract the best and brightest to lead our public service, but at the same time, we need to ensure remuneration is tied to performance and that is lacking in our current system.
"I would like to see reform in this space as we continue to value and build the capacity of the APS more broadly into the future."
Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher told The Canberra Times in March that while she was sympathetic to the public's concerns, "it's hard to unwind a system that's been put in place over many years".
"I get people's concerns with that, I do," Senator Gallagher said at the time.
"I understand it when they see it in isolation, or relate it back to their own experience of work, but I also know how hard [secretaries work].
"These are serious jobs, and we need the best and brightest, and we need to retain them in the public service."
Already some of the world's best-paid senior public servants, Australia's departmental secretaries are on the brink of earning million-dollar pay packets in the coming years.
Successive pay rises have pushed Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Steven Kennedy and Treasury secretary Jenny Wilkinson past the $1 million mark for the 2025-26 financial year, and their colleagues are not far behind.
Dr Kennedy, who is the country's most senior bureaucrat, earns nearly triple the highest rate for United States departmental secretaries, set at $250,600 USD as of January, or about $386,237 AUD.
The march towards million-dollar pay began just over a decade ago, when new legislation returned the power to set senior public service salaries to the Remuneration Tribunal.
While Dr Kennedy plays a role in deciding pay for some of his colleagues, the greatest influence is exerted by the tribunal.
It recommends secretaries be placed in either an upper or lower level of remuneration, and also considers annual pay rises. The figures it decides on include salary, allowances, benefits and superannuation.
In 2011, the tribunal had been concerned for some time that secretary salaries were well below what they should be, and had not kept pace with the rising earnings of their subordinates in the Senior Executive Service.
It recommended an overhaul of the structure used to determine pay for APS bosses, rebasing the uppermost point - the salary of the Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary - to more than $800,000 by mid-2014.
Ten pay rises since 2011 have brought secretary salaries to where they are today.
If the tribunal decides on a 2 per cent pay rise in 2026, without changing the current structure, four more secretaries will rise above the $1 million mark.
This will include the heads of Defence, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Health and Infrastructure.
Two per cent is the lowest pay rise the tribunal has approved since 2011, and public service employees will receive a 3.4 per cent hike in 2026.
While this appears likely given the tribunal's past decisions, it could also decide to hold off.
The tribunal must look at annual wage decisions and also weighs up APS wage increases, consumer price index and wage price index.
In 2020, as the Australian economy faced the COVID-19 pandemic and public sector wages were frozen, the tribunal announced it would not offer a pay rise.
"The Tribunal's primary focus is to provide competitive and equitable remuneration that is appropriate to the responsibilities and experience required of the roles, and that is sufficient to attract and retain people of calibre," it said at the time.
"However, this does not happen in a vacuum. The context of the broader jobs market and the economy are also considered."
The body can also dock a secretary's pay, based on Machinery of Government changes that shrink the scope of their responsibilities, but incumbents are protected from having pay go backwards.
Health secretary Blair Comley has meanwhile received an extra promotion, taking his salary from $910,270 to $983,910, after his department gained oversight of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
While Labor maintains that secretaries' pay is an independent decision, there is room for political intervention.
The tribunal noted in 2020 that it had received a request from then finance minister Mathias Cormann and assistant public service minister Greg Hunt to freeze pay for APS bosses, and opted to comply.
The steady increase has caused concern among some politicians, who earn considerably less than their senior bureacrats.
"They earn more than me," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said when asked about the issue earlier in the year, in reference to his salary of about $622,000.
Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie last year called on Parliament to radically reduce the earnings of senior public servants, capping remuneration at about $430,000 unless otherwise approved by the relevant ministers.
"Departmental secretaries have important responsibilities, and their pay should be appropriate to ensure those positions are competitively filled by capable people," Senator Lambie said at the time.
"But the present levels of pay at the top of the bureaucratic and academic trees don't pass the pub test."
Meanwhile, independent senator David Pocock wants to see the tribunal consider performance in its decisions. The current system is based on the size of departments and the scope and complexity of the portfolio.
"Senior public servants in Australia are paid well above those in most comparable OECD countries, including in Europe, the UK and US," Senator Pocock said.
"We want to be able to attract the best and brightest to lead our public service, but at the same time, we need to ensure remuneration is tied to performance and that is lacking in our current system.
"I would like to see reform in this space as we continue to value and build the capacity of the APS more broadly into the future."
Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher told The Canberra Times in March that while she was sympathetic to the public's concerns, "it's hard to unwind a system that's been put in place over many years".
"I get people's concerns with that, I do," Senator Gallagher said at the time.
"I understand it when they see it in isolation, or relate it back to their own experience of work, but I also know how hard [secretaries work].
"These are serious jobs, and we need the best and brightest, and we need to retain them in the public service."
Already some of the world's best-paid senior public servants, Australia's departmental secretaries are on the brink of earning million-dollar pay packets in the coming years.
Successive pay rises have pushed Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Steven Kennedy and Treasury secretary Jenny Wilkinson past the $1 million mark for the 2025-26 financial year, and their colleagues are not far behind.
Dr Kennedy, who is the country's most senior bureaucrat, earns nearly triple the highest rate for United States departmental secretaries, set at $250,600 USD as of January, or about $386,237 AUD.
The march towards million-dollar pay began just over a decade ago, when new legislation returned the power to set senior public service salaries to the Remuneration Tribunal.
While Dr Kennedy plays a role in deciding pay for some of his colleagues, the greatest influence is exerted by the tribunal.
It recommends secretaries be placed in either an upper or lower level of remuneration, and also considers annual pay rises. The figures it decides on include salary, allowances, benefits and superannuation.
In 2011, the tribunal had been concerned for some time that secretary salaries were well below what they should be, and had not kept pace with the rising earnings of their subordinates in the Senior Executive Service.
It recommended an overhaul of the structure used to determine pay for APS bosses, rebasing the uppermost point - the salary of the Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary - to more than $800,000 by mid-2014.
Ten pay rises since 2011 have brought secretary salaries to where they are today.
If the tribunal decides on a 2 per cent pay rise in 2026, without changing the current structure, four more secretaries will rise above the $1 million mark.
This will include the heads of Defence, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Health and Infrastructure.
Two per cent is the lowest pay rise the tribunal has approved since 2011, and public service employees will receive a 3.4 per cent hike in 2026.
While this appears likely given the tribunal's past decisions, it could also decide to hold off.
The tribunal must look at annual wage decisions and also weighs up APS wage increases, consumer price index and wage price index.
In 2020, as the Australian economy faced the COVID-19 pandemic and public sector wages were frozen, the tribunal announced it would not offer a pay rise.
"The Tribunal's primary focus is to provide competitive and equitable remuneration that is appropriate to the responsibilities and experience required of the roles, and that is sufficient to attract and retain people of calibre," it said at the time.
"However, this does not happen in a vacuum. The context of the broader jobs market and the economy are also considered."
The body can also dock a secretary's pay, based on Machinery of Government changes that shrink the scope of their responsibilities, but incumbents are protected from having pay go backwards.
Health secretary Blair Comley has meanwhile received an extra promotion, taking his salary from $910,270 to $983,910, after his department gained oversight of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
While Labor maintains that secretaries' pay is an independent decision, there is room for political intervention.
The tribunal noted in 2020 that it had received a request from then finance minister Mathias Cormann and assistant public service minister Greg Hunt to freeze pay for APS bosses, and opted to comply.
The steady increase has caused concern among some politicians, who earn considerably less than their senior bureacrats.
"They earn more than me," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said when asked about the issue earlier in the year, in reference to his salary of about $622,000.
Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie last year called on Parliament to radically reduce the earnings of senior public servants, capping remuneration at about $430,000 unless otherwise approved by the relevant ministers.
"Departmental secretaries have important responsibilities, and their pay should be appropriate to ensure those positions are competitively filled by capable people," Senator Lambie said at the time.
"But the present levels of pay at the top of the bureaucratic and academic trees don't pass the pub test."
Meanwhile, independent senator David Pocock wants to see the tribunal consider performance in its decisions. The current system is based on the size of departments and the scope and complexity of the portfolio.
"Senior public servants in Australia are paid well above those in most comparable OECD countries, including in Europe, the UK and US," Senator Pocock said.
"We want to be able to attract the best and brightest to lead our public service, but at the same time, we need to ensure remuneration is tied to performance and that is lacking in our current system.
"I would like to see reform in this space as we continue to value and build the capacity of the APS more broadly into the future."
Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher told The Canberra Times in March that while she was sympathetic to the public's concerns, "it's hard to unwind a system that's been put in place over many years".
"I get people's concerns with that, I do," Senator Gallagher said at the time.
"I understand it when they see it in isolation, or relate it back to their own experience of work, but I also know how hard [secretaries work].
"These are serious jobs, and we need the best and brightest, and we need to retain them in the public service."
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


West Australian
5 minutes ago
- West Australian
Creators trying to make 'wage slaves' care about tax
Very few people stop Wentworth MP Allegra Spender on the streets of Bondi to talk about tax reform and she wants that to change. That's why among the usual cast of economic boffins, politicians and business representatives at the teal independent's tax roundtable in Parliament House on Friday, content creators were packaging up the discussion to cut through to a different audience. While young people feel the impacts of the tax system on housing unaffordability and stagnant real wages, getting them to care about changing it - and ensuring policymakers know that support is there - is another matter. Former Treasury secretary Ken Henry, who wrote the book on tax reform during the Rudd and Gillard governments, said the current system was broken. The burden is increasingly shifting onto the shoulders of young people, who are also contending with an increasingly unaffordable housing market. "Tax policy tragics know that tax reform is necessary, but the thing is that most people in the community do not," he told the roundtable. "I reckon the best thing that we can do as a group is to help make the case, to help in the construction of a compelling narrative, something that motivates action." Ms Spender agrees. "You have to convince people why it's important before you can convince them what the solution is," Ms Spender told AAP. "People don't come up to me in the street to talk about a particular aspect of tax. "But they talk to me about the fact that they're worried about their kids, whether they can get a home. They're worried about productivity, and whether our businesses can get access to capital. "Those are the things that people worry about. They don't necessarily see the link back to tax." Ms Spender has been taking to Instagram to get the message out. Also there to spread the message were Konrad Benjamin, whose Punter's Politics videos rack up millions of views on social media, and Natasha Etschmann, a personal finance podcaster with more than 300,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok. They have a direct line to a growing cohort of younger Australians who increasingly feel the system is stacked against them. Getting buy-in from regular punters who felt left out was an important step if things were to change politically, Mr Benjamin said. The solutions raised around the table were largely the same ones tax reform advocates have been calling for for more than a decade - taxing carbon and resources more effectively, reducing reliance on personal income tax, and boosting incentives for investment. "They know the solutions," Mr Benjamin said. "How do you get it through? And how do you communicate it? And that's, I suppose, where we are sitting. "We're trying to shape the political discourse around something like tax, because it's been dominated by the Murdoch channels. "But who's bearing the burden? Our generation, wage slaves, us."


Perth Now
5 minutes ago
- Perth Now
Creators trying to make 'wage slaves' care about tax
Very few people stop Wentworth MP Allegra Spender on the streets of Bondi to talk about tax reform and she wants that to change. That's why among the usual cast of economic boffins, politicians and business representatives at the teal independent's tax roundtable in Parliament House on Friday, content creators were packaging up the discussion to cut through to a different audience. While young people feel the impacts of the tax system on housing unaffordability and stagnant real wages, getting them to care about changing it - and ensuring policymakers know that support is there - is another matter. Former Treasury secretary Ken Henry, who wrote the book on tax reform during the Rudd and Gillard governments, said the current system was broken. The burden is increasingly shifting onto the shoulders of young people, who are also contending with an increasingly unaffordable housing market. "Tax policy tragics know that tax reform is necessary, but the thing is that most people in the community do not," he told the roundtable. "I reckon the best thing that we can do as a group is to help make the case, to help in the construction of a compelling narrative, something that motivates action." Ms Spender agrees. "You have to convince people why it's important before you can convince them what the solution is," Ms Spender told AAP. "People don't come up to me in the street to talk about a particular aspect of tax. "But they talk to me about the fact that they're worried about their kids, whether they can get a home. They're worried about productivity, and whether our businesses can get access to capital. "Those are the things that people worry about. They don't necessarily see the link back to tax." Ms Spender has been taking to Instagram to get the message out. Also there to spread the message were Konrad Benjamin, whose Punter's Politics videos rack up millions of views on social media, and Natasha Etschmann, a personal finance podcaster with more than 300,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok. They have a direct line to a growing cohort of younger Australians who increasingly feel the system is stacked against them. Getting buy-in from regular punters who felt left out was an important step if things were to change politically, Mr Benjamin said. The solutions raised around the table were largely the same ones tax reform advocates have been calling for for more than a decade - taxing carbon and resources more effectively, reducing reliance on personal income tax, and boosting incentives for investment. "They know the solutions," Mr Benjamin said. "How do you get it through? And how do you communicate it? And that's, I suppose, where we are sitting. "We're trying to shape the political discourse around something like tax, because it's been dominated by the Murdoch channels. "But who's bearing the burden? Our generation, wage slaves, us."

The Age
an hour ago
- The Age
Government ‘won't give up' on US tariff reprieve after Trump celebrates end of beef ban
Trade Minister Don Farrell has insisted the federal government could convince Donald Trump to remove all tariffs on Australian goods, as the US president said he would use the decision to allow North American beef into the country to pressure other countries to capitulate in trade talks. The Trump administration hailed the deal, announced on Thursday, as a win even as analysts said the step was unlikely to significantly boost US shipments because beef prices are much lower in Australia. 'The other Countries that refuse our magnificent Beef are ON NOTICE,' Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Thursday. 'All of our Nation's Ranchers, who are some of the hardest working and most wonderful people, are smiling today, which means I am smiling too. Let's keep the Hot Streak going. IT'S THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICA!' Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has attempted to renegotiate trade deals with multiple countries that he asserts have taken advantage of the United States over the years. Many economists have disputed Trump's characterisation. Farrell said the beef decision was science-based and unconnected to trade negotiations. 'We haven't done this in order to entice the Americans into a trade agreement,' he said in an appearance at the Lowy Institute think tank on Friday. Loading 'We think they should do that anyway. We think the Americans should honour the terms of our free trade agreement.' Asked if it was fanciful to expect Australia could be given an exemption to Trump's baseline 10 per cent tariff when no other country has achieved this, Farrell said: 'I think eventually the Americans will come to the realisation that tariffs are an act of self harm that are actually pushing up inflation, pushing up unemployment and reduced their retirement benefits and economic growth. So I don't think we should give up on the ambition to get those tariffs removed.' Farrell said that because of the shift away from free trade under Trump 'what we risk seeing is a shift from a system based on shared prosperity and interdependence to one based solely on power and size'.