When last year the salary of the top Commonwealth departmental secretaries tipped over the magic million mark, senator Jacqui Lambie's blood, usually on high simmer, boiled over.

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She introduced a bill that would have capped these salaries at $430,000 per annum.

In doing so she cursed against what she called a "culture of obscene entitlement at the top of the Commonwealth bureaucracy" and invoked the infamously unreliable "pub test" to assert that the secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet "shouldn't be earning twice the salary of the Deputy Prime Minister."

Lambie's bill was referred to a parliamentary committee and was later voted down.

Yet the bill and its associated histrionics may have jangled nerves in relevant quarters.

While it has usually increased secretary salaries annually in June, the Remuneration Tribunal recently "notified its decision to determine no adjustment to remuneration for public offices in its jurisdiction with effect from July 1, 2026."

Then, in lieu of that usual leg up, the Tribunal announced a "comprehensive review" of secretary salaries and issued a "consultation paper" with an invitation for comments thereon. This is a welcome change to the Tribunal's usual methods in which it has kept its cards close to it chest.

The consultation paper provides useful background and explanation as to how departmental secretary salaries got to their present level of inflation.

The rot set in with 20 per cent increase in exchange for the introduction of fixed-period appointments in the 1990s under the Keating government. Fifteen years later the tribunal came up with a much bigger boost yet without adequate explanation - because there wasn't one.

Since then the tribunal has adjusted secretary salaries more or less in line with increases in other parts of the public service.

Now the lowest level of secretary remuneration is $300,000 more than the average-median rate for Band 3s in the Senior Executive Service (SES), while the highest paid........

© Canberra Times