What Adelaide’s local government fat cats earn: Councils splash out on ceos, councillors and mayors

More than 1200 council staff in Adelaide are earning between $100,000 to $363,636 each year. See how much your mayor, CEO and senior council staffers get paid.

More than 1200 of the top council staff in Adelaide are earning between $100,000 and $363,636 each year, prompting criticism about the way ratepayers’ money is spent.

Property Council director Daniel Gannon said some of the inefficiency could be avoided by council amalgamations and said the sheer size of salaries did not “pass the pub test”.

“There’s too much inefficiency, inconsistency and duplication of services across 68 councils, with 19 of them based in metropolitan Adelaide alone,’’ he said.

Combined, council documents show Adelaide CEOs alone earn more than $5m each year.

“No matter how you slice it, there is overwhelming public support for local government reform to rein in waste, inefficiency and bureaucratic duplication,’’ Mr Gannon said.

“Councils have an important role to play in providing local services, but ratepayers are right to question whether these functions require sky-high salaries to boot.

“It’s up to councils to explain how or why this approach passes the pub test.”

But LGA President Angela Evans said future CEO contracts would be limited by salary bands.

“Council CEOs oversee delivery of a broad range of essential community services, manage multimillion-dollar budgets, and are responsible for billions of dollars in public infrastructure,’' she said.

“We welcome CEO remuneration bands soon being set by the independent Remuneration Tribunal of SA, providing a basis for greater transparency and consistency across the sector.”

Property Council SA executive director Daniel Gannon and Adelaide Lord Mayor Sandy Verschoor. Picture: Colin James

Adelaide City Council reform advocate Cr Alexander Hyde said in excess of $25m in annual savings had been made at the council without discontinuing any services.

“Local governments across South Australia desperately need comprehensive reform,'' he said.

“Many of these savings came from restructuring our internal services like finance, procurement, Human Resources, and policy departments.

“A similar approach in other councils would almost definitely result in hundreds of millions in annual savings which could be used to lower rates at a time when cost of living is high or to build better infrastructure.”

Uniting Communities spokesman Mark Henley said the welfare sector was trying to reduce the gulf between executives and the lowest paid, which was worst in the private sector.

Councils are forced by law to provide “salary registers” to the public, with almost all posting the documents on their web sites.

Mr Henley said the registers also showed that many council workers were on as little as $30,000 per year, or an “unfair” one tenth of the highest paid.

“That is sod all to live on. The average Adelaide rent is $405 per week, so that’s $21,000 each year in rent, and $10,000 for everything else,” he said.

“In the short term the crucial next step is to increase minimum wages so that cleaners, hospitality workers, care sector staff etc are all able to earn a liveable wage.”