Australian politicians get paid well. Does that make them better?

Federal politicians got a 2.4% pay rise this week, taking the base salary of a backbench MP to $239,270, more than twice Australia’s average full-time wage.

By my reckoning — using political pay data I have compiled since 2022 at politicalsalaries.com — this makes our federal MPs the sixth-best-paid national legislators in the world, surpassed only by their political counterparts in the United States, Israel, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates and Germany.

It is often claimed that higher salaries attract higher-calibre politicians. In which case, Australia must be governed by some of the most brilliant politicians on Earth. But, alas, evidence for this is as flimsy as a nuclear submarine deal with Donald Trump.

One issue is that the term “better” is highly subjective. What type of “better” politicians are we hoping for, exactly? Better educated? More real-life experience? More diverse? Less corrupt? Whatever the hoped-for virtue, the evidence suggests higher salaries probably won’t deliver it.

There is some research showing that higher salaries attract better-educated politicians, in certain circumstances. In Brazil, for example, a pay rise for local politicians improved the education levels and work rates of legislators, according to a 2008 study. In Finland, a 35% pay rise in 2000 led to an increase in female candidates with post-school qualifications, but didn’t make a difference to the educational achievements of male candidates.

However, other studies have found that higher salaries did not improve the educational standards of legislators — and may even have had the opposite effect.

A 2013 Canadian study examined two pay increases for Canadian MPs, the first in 1963 and another in 2001, that were specifically designed to attract young, well-educated candidates into parliament. The researchers found the pay rises did not lead to younger, more educated or better-qualified Canadian MPs, leading them to conclude there was “little evidence” the reforms achieved their stated objectives.

While higher salaries may attract higher-quality candidates to stand for election, “they also provide strong incentives for poorly qualified individuals to enter politics”, the researchers said.

Another study found that big pay rises for members of the European Parliament in the early 2000s increased the incentive for lower-quality candidates to win office, sending these members’ average educational levels backwards.

Do we even need better-educated politicians in Australia anyway? University graduates are already significantly overrepresented in political life, with 85% of the members of the 47th Parliament holding at least one post-secondary qualification, compared to around 64% of the general adult population. It may make sense for some countries to actively increase educational levels in parliament, but it’s probably not necessary in Australia.

It is also dubious whether higher political salaries would lead to greater economic diversity in parliament.

A 2016 US study investigated this exact issue, examining whether higher salaries encouraged more people from working-class backgrounds to enter state and local politics. The researchers did find a link between the two things, but not in the direction many people would expect. Instead of boosting the election prospects of working-class politicians, they were “crowded out by career political professionals” in US states with generous salaries on offer, the researchers found.

The study’s conclusion was blunt: “Activists and political observers should stop saying that raising legislative salaries would make holding office more accessible for middle and working-class Americans or that it would reduce class-based political inequalities. It probably wouldn’t.”

Another argument for higher political pay is the claim that MPs would be less susceptible to corruption if only they were paid more money.

One proponent of this line of thinking is Rupert Murdoch. He points to the example of Singapore, “where every minister gets at least $1 million a year, and the prime minister a lot more, and there is no temptation and it is the cleanest society you would find anywhere”.

It is true that Singapore has high political salaries and low corruption. Yet Denmark and Finland both have lower corruption than Singapore, according to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, despite paying their politicians significantly less.

Meanwhile, countries that score lowest on the index tend to be poorer nations in Africa, whose politicians are vastly overpaid in comparison to local wages. Correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation.

In reality, few politicians are likely to enter politics solely for the money. Election to parliament comes with a whole range of non-salary benefits, including influence, fame and the opportunity to shape the country in their own vision.

If they are more worried about the money, perhaps they are not suited to the job, and offering them more money won’t make them any more suitable.

It’s not like there is a shortage of people vying for a seat in parliament anyway. At the 2025 federal election, almost 1,500 candidates competed for 150 House of Representatives seats and 40 Senate seats.

Whether or not all of those candidates could be considered “high quality” is a matter of opinion, but the evidence suggests offering more money would do little to attract better ones.