The APS's march towards $1 million salaries
By Miriam Webber Updated July 18 2025
Already some of the world's best-paid senior public servants, Australia's departmental secretaries are on the brink of earning million-dollar pay packets in the coming years.
Successive pay rises have pushed Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Steven Kennedy and Treasury secretary Jenny Wilkinson past the $1 million mark for the 2025-26 financial year, and their colleagues are not far behind.
Dr Kennedy, who is the country's most senior bureaucrat, earns nearly triple the highest rate for United States departmental secretaries, set at $250,600 USD as of January, or about $386,237 AUD.
How did we get here?
The march towards million-dollar pay began just over a decade ago, when new legislation returned the power to set senior public service salaries to the Remuneration Tribunal.
While Dr Kennedy plays a role in deciding pay for some of his colleagues, the greatest influence is exerted by the tribunal.
Former Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Glyn Davis, left, with Steven Kennedy, right. Picture by Keegan Carroll
It recommends secretaries be placed in either an upper or lower level of remuneration, and also considers annual pay rises. The figures it decides on include salary, allowances, benefits and superannuation.
In 2011, the tribunal had been concerned for some time that secretary salaries were well below what they should be, and had not kept pace with the rising earnings of their subordinates in the Senior Executive Service.
It recommended an overhaul of the structure used to determine pay for APS bosses, rebasing the uppermost point - the salary of the Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary - to more than $800,000 by mid-2014.
Ten pay rises since 2011 have brought secretary salaries to where they are today.
If the tribunal decides on a 2 per cent pay rise in 2026, without changing the current structure, four more secretaries will rise above the $1 million mark.
This will include the heads of Defence, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Health and Infrastructure.
Two per cent is the lowest pay rise the tribunal has approved since 2011, and public service employees will receive a 3.4 per cent hike in 2026.
While this appears likely given the tribunal's past decisions, it could also decide to hold off.
The tribunal must look at annual wage decisions and also weighs up APS wage increases, consumer price index and wage price index.
In 2020, as the Australian economy faced the COVID-19 pandemic and public sector wages were frozen, the tribunal announced it would not offer a pay rise.
"The Tribunal's primary focus is to provide competitive and equitable remuneration that is appropriate to the responsibilities and experience required of the roles, and that is sufficient to attract and retain people of calibre," it said at the time.
"However, this does not happen in a vacuum. The context of the broader jobs market and the economy are also considered."
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The body can also dock a secretary's pay, based on Machinery of Government changes that shrink the scope of their responsibilities, but incumbents are protected from having pay go backwards.
Health secretary Blair Comley has meanwhile received an extra promotion, taking his salary from $910,270 to $983,910, after his department gained oversight of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
While Labor maintains that secretaries' pay is an independent decision, there is room for political intervention.
The tribunal noted in 2020 that it had received a request from then finance minister Mathias Cormann and assistant public service minister Greg Hunt to freeze pay for APS bosses, and opted to comply.
Will there be another overhaul?
The steady increase has caused concern among some politicians, who earn considerably less than their senior bureacrats.
"They earn more than me," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said when asked about the issue earlier in the year, in reference to his salary of about $622,000.
Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie last year called on Parliament to radically reduce the earnings of senior public servants, capping remuneration at about $430,000 unless otherwise approved by the relevant ministers.
"Departmental secretaries have important responsibilities, and their pay should be appropriate to ensure those positions are competitively filled by capable people," Senator Lambie said at the time.
"But the present levels of pay at the top of the bureaucratic and academic trees don't pass the pub test."
Meanwhile, independent senator David Pocock wants to see the tribunal consider performance in its decisions. The current system is based on the size of departments and the scope and complexity of the portfolio.
"Senior public servants in Australia are paid well above those in most comparable OECD countries, including in Europe, the UK and US," Senator Pocock said.
"We want to be able to attract the best and brightest to lead our public service, but at the same time, we need to ensure remuneration is tied to performance and that is lacking in our current system.
"I would like to see reform in this space as we continue to value and build the capacity of the APS more broadly into the future."
Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher told The Canberra Times in March that while she was sympathetic to the public's concerns, "it's hard to unwind a system that's been put in place over many years".
"I get people's concerns with that, I do," Senator Gallagher said at the time.
"I understand it when they see it in isolation, or relate it back to their own experience of work, but I also know how hard [secretaries work].
"These are serious jobs, and we need the best and brightest, and we need to retain them in the public service."
