How do Australian politicians compare to the rest of the world?

The Queensland government's decision to overturn a pay freeze on politician's salaries has made the state's MPs the highest-paid in Australia.

The former premier of Queensland Anna Bligh froze salaries in 2009, a decision which has now been reversed after the acting premier, Jeff Seeney, received crown law advice that the pay freeze was "unlawful".

Base salaries for Queensland politicians are indexed at $500 less than that of federal politicians, according to the Parliament of Queensland Act 2001 (PDF). The change would put Queensland MPs on a base salary of $194,630, less than the federal base salary of $195,130.



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This is up $57,481 from the previous amount of $137,149, and $41,500 greater than the next highest state, South Australia, which is also indexed against federal salaries.

The Queensland government intends to offset the cost of the pay rise to taxpayers by cutting electorate allowances and public funding to political parties. Apart from salaries, politicians receive other remuneration in the form of an electoral allowance, which provides funds to the MP for goods and services required in the running of their electorate, such as travel and communications. This allowance varies based on the size of the electorate, and ranges from $39,263 in smaller electorates to $77,922 in larger ones.

A statement put out by Seeney said that the government intended to reduce electorate allowances paid on 1 July by 50%, and also to cut public funding of political parties by 50% to offset the pay rise.

A spokesperson for Seeney's office said: "The government is advised that public funding for political parties put in place by the former Bligh Labor government would result in payments of $24m over the three-year term of the current government. The funding will now be capped at 50% of that amount. Treasury is currently confirming these figures."

Bob Katter's Australian party said they will try to reverse the pay rise by introducing a private member's bill at the next sitting of parliament.

Other states have ended the link between state and federal salaries, and have (or will have) their own tribunals to determine pay rises.

Internationally, Australia's politicians are comparatively well paid. Using salary figures prepared in October 2012 for the UK parliament (pdf), Australian politicians are third from the top, behind Italy and Japan, out of 14 countries, and should possibly be second, as the amount used for Japan is the average rather than base salary.



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However if you factor in GDP per capita to get an idea of the different living standards of each country, Australia moves much further down the list.

Part of the difficulty of comparing MPs' salaries in different countries is the amount of other allowances and entitlements politicians receive. A single figure for the salary will almost certainly not show the true extent of remuneration in each country and state.