{"id":373986,"date":"2026-02-22T20:13:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T10:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=373986"},"modified":"2026-02-22T20:17:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T10:17:33","slug":"17-per-cent-of-the-australian-working-age-population-is-now-on-the-government-payroll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=373986","title":{"rendered":"17 per cent of the Australian working age population is now on the government payroll"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>According to the ex-NSW Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner for Japan and Korea, Michael Newman:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Australia has 140 public servants to every 1,000 people<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Japan has 38 per 1,000 people.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Employs 2.5 million bureaucrats, costing us $232 billion a year.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Has five times our population, runs on 3.3 million bureaucrats and spends only $270 billion.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>17 per cent of the working age population is now on the government payroll.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Just five per cent.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Bureaucrats are on bigger salaries too. Per head, Aussie public servants earn an average of $93,000 versus Japan at just $76,000.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>At the senior executive level, federal heads of department are raking in up to $1,000,000 Aussie dollars a year.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>To compare with Japan, the top earning politicians in the Asian archipelago bring home about $255,000. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mr Newman sensibly suggested that senior civil servants should be paid like private sector professionals, with a smaller base salary with performance-based rewards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As Thomas Sowell said &#8220;It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mr Newman sensibly suggested that senior civil servants should be paid like private sector professionals, with a smaller base salary with performance-based rewards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":167726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[273,35],"tags":[19664,5982],"class_list":["post-373986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-breaking-news","tag-australian-public-service","tag-canberra"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=373986"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":373992,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373986\/revisions\/373992"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/167726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=373986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=373986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=373986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}