Senator Lambie is proposing to cap salaries for university Vice-Chancellors and senior public servants at $430,000 a year.

It’s true that remuneration for these two groups has exploded over recent decades. Accounting for inflation, Vice-Chancellors were already paid $300,000 per year in 1985, today’s figure is over $1 million. Similarly Australian public service heads of department now receive an average of over $900,000 in remuneration per year.

Workers and students have not kept up. From 1985 to 2023, adjusting for inflation, income support for students grew by less than 20%, average full-time earnings grew nearly 40%, Group of Eight Vice-Chancellor remuneration grew 320%.

High pay for Vice-Chancellors doesn’t seem to improve student learning experiences. There is no strong relationship between Vice-Chancellor pay and student satisfaction. In fact, the three universities paying their Vice-Chancellors the most, have very low levels of student satisfaction.

Nor are lower-level staff benefiting in our unequal education system. In 2022 Vice-Chancellor remuneration was at least 7 times more than that for university lecturers, more than 9 times than for high school teacher and over 10 times more than for primary school teachers. Casualisation, job insecurity and unpaid work and even contraventions of employment law are now rife in the university sector, the National Tertiary Education Union estimates that there is “more than $400 million in wage theft” across the sector.

You can read more about how students are not benefiting in our system here, and more on issue facing university staff here.  

It has been A morning.

In case you need a catch up – Donald Trump has killed off any pretense for a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, holding a press conference with a grinning Benjamin Netanyahu (a man wanted by the ICC to face war crime charges, including charges of crimes against humanity)when he announced the United States would “own” the Gaza strip, a sovereign territory and force Palestinians into surrounding Middle Eastern countries. Make no mistake, that amounts to ethnic cleansing.

Trump spoke of the United States leveling Gaza and then rebuilding it, as if it were a New York warehouse development project. This will have wide ranging impacts across the geopolitical space, but most particularly the Palestinians and the Middle East at large, where Trump has effectively threatened to force Jordan and Egypt to accept Palestinian forced refugees (the US is a massive funder of Jordan and Egypt and Trump is effectively threatening to collapse both nations to get what he wants).

There has been no response from the Australian government or the opposition.

In domestic political news, the fight over who has the better lunch quip continues as the Coalition and government fight over the opposition’s schnitty and sanga policy, and who cares more about small business.

The government has banned China AI chatbot DeepSeek from government devices following security advice, but isn’t applying the same ruler over US based Big Tech, despite the risks posed by Elon Musk and co.

A second person has died in the Queensland floods. There is still no talk about the need to stop fossil fuels.

Unemployment has been historically low but as data released by the ABS today shows, there are lots of people who want a job but are missing out because they need to care for their children.

The ABS released Barriers and Incentives to Labour Force Participation. It shows 213,000 people want a job but are unavailable to start work.

What are the main reasons they’re unavailable? For both women and men, the main reason was because they have to care for children. 58% of women nominated caring for children as a reason they could start work. For men it was 43%.

More high quality, affordable, and available early childhood education and care would help tens of thousands of people gain access to employment. This would not only be great for these people but would also come with huge economic benefits for Australia.

A big barrier to this is not just affordability but also availability. This is why the Australia Institute proposes that early childhood education and care should be offered in the same way as school education. You can read more about how to fix our broken childcare system here.

While the government is happy that inflation grew just 2.4% we always need to remember than inflation (measured as the Consumer Price Index) is not cost-of-living.

The big reason is that the CPI does not measure mortgage repayments. Good thing is that the ABS does also measure “cost of living” which includes mortgages (and doesn’t include the cost of building a new home, which let’s be honest, ain’t a cost of living).

The ABS also divided households up into types – employees (ie someone working); government beneficiaries (so those on Jobseeker or Disability Support or Single Parenting Payment), Age Pension and “Self-funded (or let’s be honest, tax-break funded) retirees.

The upshot is that in the past year the increase in the cost of living was:

Employees: 4.0%

Age Pensioners: 2.5%

Other govt transfer recipients: 3.2%

“Self-funded” retirees: 2.5%

CPI: 2.4%

The big reason for the difference with inflation is in the past year the cost of mortgage repayments went up 14.7% in 2024 (down from a 18.9% rise in the year to September.) And since March 2022, mortgage repayments have risen… (gulp) 159%.

This is why the government (and anyone with a mortgage) will be glad that the market thinks there is a 95% chance the RBA will cut rates in 2 weeks

The press conference following Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu has made it very, very clear what Trump plans for the Gaza strip and potentially the West Bank. Make no mistake, what he is suggesting amounts to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and the take over of a sovereign territory and follows on from his comments that he expects Jordan, Egypt and other Middle Eastern nations to take in the Palestinian people.

Trump told reporters:

“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too. We’ll own it. And be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area”.

Trump continued:

“I do see along term ownership position and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East and maybe the entire Middle East. Everybody I have spoken to, this was not a decision made lightly, everybody I have spoken to love the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent, really magnificent that nobody would know and nobody can look because all they see is death and destruction and rubble and demolished buildings falling all over.

A terrible sight.

I have studied this very closely over a lot of months and I have seen it from every different angle and it is a very dangerous place to be. It is only going to get worse. I think it is an idea that has gotten tremendous, I am talking about from the highest level of leadership, gotten tremendous [response] and if the United States can help to bring stability and peace in the Middle East we will do that.”

The Australia Institute’s Centre For Future Work report modelled the effects of early retirement by firefighters and paramedics (due to things like physical and psychological challenges and very few alternative career options) and looked how how retirement could be made easier, given what the career cost them.

This analysis found that:

• Under optimistic assumptions an early-retiring single firefighter can expect their superannuation to run out six years before male life expectancy, nine years before female life expectancy, and 15 years earlier than for a regular retiree.
• For paramedics these figures are seven years before male life expectancy, ten years before female life expectancy, and 14 years earlier than for a regular retiree.
• Under alternative scenarios, incorporating plausible risks, an early-retiring firefighters and paramedics can expect their superannuation to run out 15 or more years before life expectancy.

The report’s core recommendation was for higher superannuation contributions for emergency responders and one-off end-of-career contributions for workers already approaching retirement age.

Nick McKim will be speaking about the Greens legislation to try and introduce higher superannuation for paramedics and fire fighters, which will no doubt have drawn from this work.

A reminder of why policy work is so important – it can have so many positive aspects on people’s lives.

Also in the parliament today – Grace Stanke the US nuclear power activist and former Miss America 2023, as part of her ‘Australian tour’ for the Australian Nuclear Association.

A reminder that the Temu Trumps pushing this policy do not actually intend on enacting it – it is a distraction to take over the political agenda. And it is working.

In case you missed it, researcher Jack Thrower has done some brilliant analysis on Australian vice-chancellor pay – you will be shocked to learn that high pay doesn’t equal better outcomes for students.

Jacqui Lambie has been listening – she has called a snap presser, with Rex Patrick (who is looking for a return to the senate) calling for caps to their pay packets (along with departmental secretaries).

We’ll bring you more on that very soon, as well.

Back to domestic news and Greens senator Nick McKim will formally announce the party’s legislation to increase superannuation contributions for firefighters and paramedics.

McKim is not only a senator – he is also an active firefighter and paramedic. We will bring you more on that policy, soon.

We covered this off a little earlier, but for those who missed what it looked like, including the grinning Benjamin Netanyahu (a man wanted by the International Criminal Court) here is Donald Trump completely trashing any pretend talk of a two-state-solution for Palestine.

It is worth mentioning because it was only yesterday that the Coalition’s Andrew Wallace claimed: “Labor chose cowardice over courage when the International Criminal Court issued warrants for Israel’s
democratically elected leaders” as well as “This government voted to recognise the state of Palestine at the UN General Assembly, breaking with allies and decades of bipartisanship on this matter”.

The Coalition have been criticising Labor after Penny Wong changed Australia’s position from formally recognising a Palestinian state at the end of a two-state peace process to recognising it as ‘part’ of the two-state solution.

Now the United States has taken the mask off and completely scrapped the policy (many knew would never be a reality) and endorsed what amounts to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in an offical White House press conference, does the Coalition turn against the US for ‘breaking with allies and decades of bipartisanship on this matter’ or does it continue to follow the US down the rabbit hole like a lap dog? Will the Australian government defend its position?

It is impossible to say in this climate.