Holly Kramer became Remuneration Tribunal president on 1 June after the expiry of John Conde AO’s term in December 2023. Photo: Woolworths Group.
Thanks to the Remuneration Tribunal’s latest adjustment, from 1 July, there will be a 3.5 per cent pay increase for politicians, departmental secretaries and public office holders.
This year’s decision is expected to have lifted Attorney-General Department Secretary Katherine Jones, Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary Glyn Davis and Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty over the seven-figure boundary line as pre-tax millionaires.
In conducting its review of remuneration, the tribunal takes account of past and projected movements in the private and public sectors, and the economic conditions in Australia from published material across the government, Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Its primary focus is to provide competitive and equitable remuneration appropriate to the responsibilities and experience required of the roles – so that it is enough to attract and retain “people of calibre”.
“Many of these office holders do not expect or require that monetary compensation for their roles in the public sector be set at private sector levels,” the tribunal says. “Rather, office holders serve for the public good and the opportunity to influence economic and social policy initiatives.”
The tribunal’s past two reviews in 2023 determined a 4 per cent adjustment for public offices and parliamentarians, respectively, effective from July and September.
Acknowledging the remuneration increases it has awarded to offices over the past decade as “modest”, the tribunal said this decision brought the cumulative total since 2015 to 18.25 per cent. This is in contrast to the 24.4 per cent increases seen more generally across the public and private sectors over the same period.
The latest decision reflects a continued period of wage growth across the economy, rising each quarter between 2020 and 2023.
According to the ABS seasonally adjusted March 2024 Wage Price Index (WPI), there has been a 3.8 per cent rise in the public sector, 4.1 per cent in the private sector and 4.1 per cent overall. In 2023, these figures respectively stood at 3 per cent, 3.8 per cent and 3.7 per cent.
Other economic factors the tribunal took into account included the change in inflation across Australia’s domestic economy.
Following a lengthy period of high inflation in 2023, there has been a slower decline than expected that is now predicted to return to the target range of 2-3 per cent in the second half of 2025.
The Federal Government’s Public Sector Workplace Relations Policy 2023 provided pay increases of 4 per cent from March, 3.8 per cent from March 2025 and 3.4 per cent from March 2026.
Meanwhile, the Average Annualised Wage Increase for federal enterprise agreements approved in the December quarter of 2023 was 4.3 per cent. This was up from 4.1 per cent in the September quarter, 2.6 per cent in 2022 and a historic low of 2.2 per cent in the December quarter of 2020.
The Fair Work Commission (FWC) has awarded increases over recent years to the national minimum wage and modern award minimum wages of 1.75 per cent in 2020 and 2.5 per cent in 2021, followed again by respective increases of 5.2 per cent and 4.5 per cent in 2022, then 8.6 per cent and 5.75 per cent in 2023.
On 3 June, 2024, the FWC announced its annual wage review decision to raise the national minimum wage by 3.75 per cent.
