Coronavirus: Pay rise freeze for MPs, judges and senior public servants

The government will freeze all pay rises for hundreds of top public servants, politicians, judges and ministerial staff.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann says the government would ask the Remuneration Tribunal to freeze pay for all positions it oversaw. Picture: AAP

The government will freeze all pay rises for hundreds of top public servants, politicians, judges and ministerial staff as it moves to share the pain of the economic shutdown that could push hundreds of thousands of Australians on to the dole queue.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann told The Australian on Tuesday the government would ask the Remuneration Tribunal to freeze pay for all positions it oversaw. This included a pay freeze for secretaries of departments (who earn $776,000-$914,000 a year), as well as heads of agencies, including corporate, financial and competition regulators.

“It’s a clear expectation there’ll be no annual salary increase for these positions until after the corona­virus crisis has been resolved­,” Senator Cormann said.

The government would also ask the Australian Public Service Commissioner to freeze pay for the 3240-strong (as of June 2019) Senior Executive Service, who in 2018 were each paid between $238,000 and $453,000.

The tribunal has awarded 2 per cent pay increases in each of the past three years.

Speaking ahead of the announce­ment, former Queensland premier Campbell Newman slammed an “unconscionable” contrast between the job outlook for public and private sector workers. “It’s simply un-Australian and unconscionable in these turbulent times that one part of our economy wears all the pain,” he said.

Senator Cormann also signalled that ministerial staff would not receive the usual 2 per cent pay rise this year.

The government and oppos­ition employed 550 taxpayer-funded advisers last year, whose annual pay ranged from about $116,000 for the most junior ­“assistant advisers” to $328,000 for “principal advisers”, excluding 15.4 per cent superannuation.

“The government will continue to work with bargaining represent­atives on a new enterprise agreement (for staff) once the crisis has been resolved,” Senator Cormann said.

Also speaking ahead of the pay freeze decision, former public service­ commissioner John Lloyd said governments could cull staff or reduce pay if they needed to.

“In extraordinary times, it is legitimate to ask that increases for senior public servants be deferred, and depending on how severe economic circumstances are later this year, even cut,” he said.

Mr Newman said public servant­s earning more than $100,000 should take a 10 per cent pay cut. “Livelihoods are being destroye­d, hundreds of thousands are being thrown out of work, and for public sectors it’s basically business as usual,” he said.

In the Fraser government in the 1970s, then treasurer Phillip Lynch’s “razor gang” slashed the public sector headcount under budget pressure.

In 1931, federal and state governments cut public sector wages by 20 per cent to help budgets ­adjust to the Great ­Depression.

John Roskam, head of the Institute of Public Affairs, said public servants needed to incur some of the costs of shutting the economy down.

“We have seen a disconnect of bureaucrat elites from the productive economy,” he said.

“Not all this extra spending has to be new money and debt.”