$350m Christmas bonus: Qld public servants’ cost-of-living payment

Tens of thousands of Queensland public servants are set to receive a one-off cost-of-living payment, but some will have to pay a portion back after a payroll bungle. TAKE OUR POLL

Queensland government headquarters at 1 William St, Brisbane

• Crisafulli: No forced redundancies

Tens of thousands of Queensland public servants are set to receive a one-off cash boost in time for Christmas, in a generous wage deal set to cost the state government $350m a year.

But a government payroll bungle has dampened the cheer, with nearly 6000 ambulance service workers overpaid by millions of dollars and authorities scrambling to claw back the cash.

Under the government’s generous wage deal eligible Queensland public servants – from its pool of nearly 250,000 – can get a “Cost of Living Adjustment” payment of up to 3 per cent if inflation exceeds their slated salary increase.

With public servants including paramedics, teachers, prosecutors and nurses, due for a 4 per cent pay rise this year it means an employee on $96,687 in 2022 can expect their annual pay before tax to hit $100,548 with a $2900 one-off cost of living boost on top.

The government confirmed the cost-of-living payment was set to cost $350m a year, though it would not specify how much had been expensed so far.

But it can be revealed millions will have to be clawed back after the government’s payroll unit accidentally paid 5783 paramedics a 4 per cent cost-of-living adjustment instead of 3 per cent.

Queensland Shared Services, the payroll unit, declined to reveal the dollar figure of the overpayment.

But it can be revealed that workers were paid between $2 and $1700 extra, meaning the overpayment at the highest scale could be $9.8m.

The United Workers Union, in an email to affected members, slammed the payroll system for “multiple mass issues” so far this year in processing important increases and back pay alongside continuous “individual errors”.

The union called for flexibility in repayment arrangements and warned that it would be pushing for a change in system away from one which consistently “disadvantaged and inconvenienced” members.

It is understood most workers were overpaid between $700 and $1000.

A QSS spokesman said overpayments due to errors by the unit were uncommon.

The government’s wage bill is its single largest expense and is expected to grow by nearly $2bn to $32.1bn in the 2023-24 financial from the previous year, largely due to the pay deal and cost-of-living payment.

Fine print in this year’s budget papers notes that Treasury does not expect the cost of living payments to be triggered after 2023-24 – a reality which would require Brisbane’s consumer price index in March to have grown by no more than 4 per cent compared to the previous year.

But even a “one percentage point increase in wage rates about expectation” would increase the wage bill by about $322m a year.

The timing for the cost-of-living payment boost differs for different sections of the public service.