2025 Queensland budget: Public service pay rises risk blowout

The Queensland government is risking further deficit blowouts after using the rejected public service wage offer to underpin its budget projections in the middle of ongoing enterprise bargaining ­negotiations.

Teachers protesting outside Parliament House in Brisbane on budget day. Picture: Nigel Hallett

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The Queensland government is risking further deficit blowouts after using the rejected public service wage offer to underpin its budget projections in the middle of ongoing enterprise bargaining ­negotiations.

Public servant wages will approach $38bn in the 2025-26 fin­ancial year, up $1.77bn or 4.9 per cent on 2024-25 figures.

Yet the Crisafulli government budget handed down on Tuesday has factored in only the initial three-year pay increases offered to the public service in March of 3 per cent in 2025, followed by 2.5 per cent annually in 2026 and 2027, which has been rejected by unions.

Asked about the prospect of bowing to union pressure to lift the separate wage offers to nurses, teachers, police and firefighters, state Treasurer David Janetzki said he would “not enter into ­hypotheticals” about potential pay increases, but he did say the government would keep negotiating.

“We’ll undertake those agreements in good faith,” he said. “Those negotiations will continue, from agency to agency.

“The numbers today, they’re clearly reflective of additional FTE (full-time employee) growth and a factoring-in of wage increases. That’s there and … and that’s the number.”

Treasury has stated that a 1 per cent increase in wage rates across the entire public service would increase the wage bill by about $380m annually.

The budget papers show an increasing proportional cost of the public service to the state.

Since June 2015 – the end of the period covered by the last of the LNP Newman government’s budgets – Queensland’s population has increased by 21 per cent but public service employee numbers have increased by 42 per cent, or twice that pace.

Despite Labor attacks that the LNP would cut public service numbers, as the Newman government did with 14,000 sackings, state employee numbers are increasing under the Crisafulli government. Budget papers show that by the middle of next year, the state will employ 277,352 full-time equivalent public servants, an increase of 6073 in one year.

Mr Janetzki also announced a freeze on the hiring of non-frontline public service bosses, predicted to save $18m over four years.

Queensland Council of Unions general secretary Jacqueline King. Picture: NewsWire / John Gass

General secretary of the Queensland Council of Unions Jacqueline King welcomed the rise in health, education and police worker numbers.

But she said the pay offers of 2.67 per cent on average over the next three years fell short of Treasury’s wages forecasts for the state’s broader labour market.

“It’s a bit like robbing Peter to pay Paul, with the government failing to offer a fair and decent wage rise required to attract and retain the public sector workforce required,” Ms King said.

The budget comes as enterprise wage agreements with the entirety of the public service will expire by early 2026.

Members of the nurses and midwives union are currently taking industrial action after rejecting a four-month pay sweetener on top of the initial offer at the end of their three-year agreement.

While the government said a short-term boost would ensure they remained the best-paid health workforce in the nation despite Victoria’s 7.1 per cent pay rise, the union said the offer did not meet the LNP’s promise ahead of the October election of deliv­ering “nation-leading pay and conditions”.

Existing agreements with the state’s teachers, police and firefighters are set to expire next week, without any deals struck.

However, it is understood that unions are demanding significant boosts in the government’s offer.

Union officials have previously threatened rolling strike action across the public sector if the government fails to come to the negotiating table throughout the enterprise bargaining process.

Ms King also said it was dis­appointing that no funding was included to improve the state’s paid parental leave, which remains among the lowest of entitlements in the country.

She added it was a key factor in the attraction and retention of the workforce and improved productivity.

Mr Janetzki said additional investments outside of wages, such as new equipment like new Tasers and body-worn cameras for police, would also be factored into negotiations.