Tasmanian parliamentary pay frozen

Tasmanian MPs’ rate of pay has been frozen since 2018. Before then the base salary of Tasmanian members of parliament increased annually. It was last increased in July 2018 to $140,185 per year.

Figure 1: Members of parliament base rate of pay 1996-97 to 2023-24

It is up to the Tasmanian Parliament to set MPs rates of pay. Because they have been frozen, Tasmania now has the lowest base salary when compared with other states, territories and the Commonwealth.

Rate of pay if it was indexed

Wages can be linked to the growth in a number of different indexes. Table 1 shows how the base salary of Tasmanian MPs would have increased if it had been linked in five different ways:

• The Australian CPI
• The Hobart CPI
• The Australian WPI
• The WPI for Health care and social assistance
• The minimum wage

Table 1: Tasmanian MPs base rate of pay if they had been indexed

Table 1 shows that Tasmanian MPs would have been paid $178,048 in 2023-24 if their salaries had kept pace with increases to the minimum wage, or $172,070 if they had been indexed in line with Australian CPI.

Figure 2 shows how much higher in dollar terms the base rate of pay of Tasmanian MPs would be if it had been indexed in the ways described above. Indexing base payments to MPs in line with any of these five measures would mean an extra $24,424 and $37,863 per year.

Figure 2: Increase from current wage if pay had been indexed

Freezing MPs’ pay means that their real wage, the amount of goods and services they can buy with their wage, has fallen. Since 2018, MPs’ real wages have fallen by $31,885 or 23%.