Top paid bureaucrats should have salaries cut by half, says Senator Jacqui Lambie
Australians struggle while public servants pocket seven-figure salaries. Now a reckoning could be coming for the country’s top earners.


News.com.au
April 16, 2026

Frustrated independents are calling for the salaries of Australia’s highest-earning bureaucrats to be cut by at least half due to the cost-of-living crisis impacting millions of families.

The Remuneration Tribunal announced it will conduct a review, the first in 15 years, on the salaries of top-paid officials to ensure they meet public expectations.

Those earning up to $1 million will be put under the microscope by the tribunal, saying there is “strong public interest” in their eye-watering wages.


One of the highest paid is Dr Steven Kennedy, who earns a base salary of $1,035,690 as the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

It provides support to the likes of Anthony Albanese, the Cabinet, portfolio ministers and assistant ministers, and advice on policy and international and national security matters.

Jenny Wilkinson, the Secretary of the Treasury, makes about $1,009,790 a year.

Described by Treasurer Jim Chalmers as one of the “most distinguished and experienced economists, Ms Wilkinson acts as the primary economic adviser to the government, with the department implementing policies and programs to achieve a stronger economy.

While the secretaries of Defence, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Home Affairs also pocket nearly seven-figures annually at roughly $984,000.

All these bureaucrats earn significantly more than the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader, Angus Taylor, who take home about $622,050 and $432,250, respectively.   


PM Anthony Albanese earns about $622,000.

Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie has been trying to cap the pay of top-paid bureaucrats.

Last year, she introduced the Remuneration Tribunal Amendment (There for the Public Service, Not Profit) Bill 2025 in an attempt to restrict the salaries of secretaries and public officers to $430,000 a year – in line with what Mr Chalmers roughly earns.

“I don’t see why they need to be paid over $500,000. I attempted to insert some constraint by requiring any salaries above the Treasurer’s to be endorsed by parliament,” she told news.com.au on Thursday.

“You cannot tell me that they have more pressure on them than the Treasurer? Or the Prime Minister come to that.”

Senator Jacqui Lambie wants to see the salary of Australia’s highest-paid bureaucrats capped at $500,000.

Senator Lambie labelled it a “disgrace” that some bureaucrats earned more than $1 million, adding it does not pass the pub test.

“How can they relate to the community they’re supposed to serve, while they pocket their $1 million dollar salaries?” she asked.

“If you halved their current remuneration, they’d still be in the top one per cent of income earners in the country. How does that make sense?”

Senator Lambie last year took to social media to highlight the disparity in pay between the senior officials and some of the ministers they’re responsible for.

“Millions struggle to make ends meet, yet taxpayer money lines the pockets of the privileged, where’s the fairness in that? TIME TO CAP THEIR SALARIES!” she wrote.

Taxpayers fed up with exorbitant pay

Australia’s senior bureaucrats are among the world’s highest paid, and that has irked taxpayers over the years, as they deal with a cost-of-living crisis on multiple fronts.   

“How can a government employee earn more than the prime minister? How can a government role be more important than being the ‘CEO of the country’?” one Reddit user asked.

“How in the hell does a public servant earn this much? Particularly when there’s no accountability. Almost double the PM’s salary!!” another added.

“What a rip off of taxpayers’ money,” a third wrote.

But others argued the salary was justified due to the nature of the position.

“It’s a tricky balance because the level of responsibility is comparable to a major corporation, so you need to attract good candidates. They’re more accountable than the average corporate CEO as well,” one wrote on a Facebook post about their salaries.

“Most people couldn’t do these jobs, and of the ones that can, most don’t want to work this hard,” a user on Reddit commented.

They say: "Pay peanuts - you get monkeys."

In my experience, highly paid managers are just very expensive monkeys. 

No public servant should be paid more than the prime minister.

If they believe that they are worth more best of luck don’t let the door hit on your arse on your way out.

So many of these highly paid jobs could and should be replaced with AI

The daughter of a senior Iranian diplomat accused of smuggling money for Hezbollah into Lebanon is working as an analyst for Queensland Health and has earned Australian citizenship.

The Australian can reveal computational biologist Atefeh Taherian Fard, a health academic who rose through the ranks at the University of Queensland over more than a decade, is the daughter of Iran’s former ambassador to Turkey, Mohammad Ebrahim Taherian Fard.

International media linked Mr Fard to a regime-run money laundering racket where diplomats would travel into Lebanon through Beirut Airport carrying suitcases stuffed with American dollars to soften Hezbollah’s funding shortfall after Israel’s relentless campaign against it and the 2024 ground invasion.

Dr Fard is the second child of a regime official implicated in terror offences found by this masthead to be living in Australia. Western democracies have become increasingly vigilant to the presence of regime gentry living abroad.

Iranian-Australian activist Ahmad Rezaei* said he struck up a friendship with Dr Fard and her then-husband, Shahin Firouztash, in 2018. A mutual friend had already told him she was the former ambassador’s daughter.

“Atefeh was extremely reluctant to mingle and acquaint with other ethnic Iranians,” he told The Australian. “Atefeh evaded any and all questions about her past, while Shahin would go silent at the slightest hint, to the point that it felt offending.

“Although (the mutual friend) had told us about Atefeh’s family ties, the subject was treated like a serious taboo. Every time our conversation seemed to lead in that direction, we were faced with … facial gestures that served to cut us off abruptly. Atefeh and Shahin never carried a family album to show.”

Arriving in Australia in the early 2010s, Dr Fard studied a doctorate of philosophy at UQ, before pursuing postdoctoral research fellowships – first at the Queensland University of Technology, then UQ’s Institute for Bio­engineering and Nanotechnology.

The Australian understands she was granted citizenship in 2019 when former opposition leader Peter Dutton was home affairs minister.