Parliamentary staff poised for pay rise with new travel allowance
Federal Parliamentary staffers have been offered the highest pay rise allowed by law including new travel allowances of up to 40-thousand dollars a year. The pay offer is expected to be strongly supported by most staff, but some liberal staffers say it's too much in the context of cost-of-living pressures.
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00:00They're being offered a slightly above core inflation, 11.2% over three years, and quite
00:11a large raft of additional allowances and payments, everything from additional travel
00:18allowance to money for staff that speak foreign languages, for instance.
00:23There are also additional cultural leave entitlements, as well as a one-off payment
00:32upon acceptance of this offer, which is from the government to roughly 2,000 staff.
00:40That payment, we understand, will be around about $1,000 and comes on top of all the other
00:46conditions and benefits.
00:48Now the government's view on this is, and that's a view obviously echoed by many of
00:53the staff that work for these ministers, senators and MPs, and that's who we're talking
00:59about here.
01:00It's senior ministerial staff and electoral staff and everyone in between who work for
01:05ministers.
01:06Their argument is this reflects the government's broader industrial relations agenda and need
01:12to support things like parental leave.
01:15It has not gone down well with a number of the coalition staffers who've been telling
01:20us this is a really bad look when the rest of the community is doing it very tough with
01:25cost of living pressures.
01:27They also say a lot of these things used to routinely come up in these enterprise agreements
01:32when negotiations were underway with the former government and they got knocked back.
01:37One of them said they came for everything but the kitchen sink and they left with everything
01:41including the kitchen sink.