Put politicians on a worker's wage

Politicians are massively overpaid. The base salary of a New South Wales MP is more than $183,000 – putting them in the top 8 percent of Australia’s income “earners”. That ‘base’ pay is already more than double the median full-time wage, but it’s just the start. Every MP gets an electoral allowance of up to $200,000 a year to spend however they like, an average of $100,000 for travel and ‘skills development’, and there’re tens of thousands more for those who grab positions such as a parliamentary committee chair. If that's still not enough, Ministers get more than $355,000, and the Premier takes home $444,000, putting them in the top 1 percent.

The result is that parliament attracts careerists and grifters. They are more interested in making life better for themselves and other elites, taking trips to wineries on the public purse, or claiming $650 a night for luxury hotels, than making life better for working-class people and our communities. If politicians had to live like the rest of us, maybe they’d think differently about the decisions they make in parliament.

We’ll fight for

Put politicians on an average worker’s wage

• Make the ’basic salary’ of all members of parliament no more than a 6th year nurse (approx. $100,000 per year, $80,000 after tax) with all increases pegged to the nurses Award.
• Abolish all ’additional salaries’ on top of the ’basic salary’.
• Make all MPs divest themselves of any and all direct stock market or other financial and trading market investments as a condition of taking office.
• Make all MPs divest themselves of any residential properties in excess of two as a condition of taking office and ban them from collecting rent on any other properties.
• Ban MPs from taking board positions in listed companies or political lobbying roles for ten years after leaving office.