Truth behind millionaire politician trend

OPINION

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recently forked out $4.3 million for a swish pad on the Central Coast, while Foreign Minister Penny Wong splashed $3.4 million on a house in Adelaide – and I’m furious.

But not for the reason you might expect.

There has been a pretty hysterical reaction to both sales, painting a picture of the pollies as Marie Antoinette-style tyrants living large while the rest of us struggle to put food on the table.

But what do we really want from our leaders?

Yes, we’re in a cost-of-living crisis, and times are tough. I’m one of the millions of Aussies with a mortgage and bills that seem to get more and more expensive each month, and yes, it absolutely sucks.

And I’ll be the first to admit the optics aren’t great, given the state of the economy at the moment. It’s also pretty dumb politically, given we’ll be heading to the polls within months at a time when we’re being battered by interest rate hikes and skyrocketing inflation.

But really, what are they supposed to do? Move into a sharehouse they found on FlatmateFinders.com.au, just because the rest of us are a bit cash-strapped?

Mr Albanese is the leader of Australia, the 13th biggest economy on the planet. He pockets just over $600,000 per year for the gig. But while that’s a pretty attractive figure, it’s peanuts compared to what he could be earning if he were a leader of another country, or the squillions he’d be raking in from the corporate world.

The same goes for Senator Wong. As of July 1 this year, Aussie MPs enjoy a base salary of $233,650, which is certainly nice to have, but small change compared to what the average CEO earns.

To put their salaries into perspective, Australia’s highest paid chief executive – Macquarie Group’s Shemara Wikramanayake – picked up around $30 million last year. The median pay for the top 300 bosses was $2.7 million in 2023, and $3.6 million for the top 200, with the CEOs from our top firms absolutely living it up, earning on average 50 times that of the typical worker.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’d know the PM grew up in a housing commission flat with his single mum in inner Sydney. He definitely wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. But he’s been a relatively well paid politician for his entire career, and at 61, is part of a generation that was able to buy a couple properties in once-humble Marrickville for a song – before it became today’s hipster wonderland – only to have them soar in value in 2024’s truly bonkers property market.

Likewise, Senator Wong is 55. She also likely bought before Australia’s housing market exploded, and plans to sell her current property as well as her mum’s, who passed away earlier this year.

While Albo’s new Cenny Coast crib sure looks nice – boasting ocean views, four bedrooms and three bathrooms – it’s not exactly the Palazzo Versace we’re talking about here. Ditto Penny Wong’s new place in Adelaide – it’s just a pleasant, relatively modest family home in a nice suburb.

And while those multimillion-dollar figures are definitely jarring at first glance at a time when so many of us are tightening our belts, let’s take a moment to remember just how nuts the property market is today.

Senator Wong’s $3.4 million suddenly doesn’t seem like such a wild splurge when you realise the median house price in Adelaide is now $911,000.

It’s even crazier in Sydney, with a median house price of more than $1,600,000, while median sold prices over the last year were $1,900,000 for houses in Copacabana on the Central Coast, where Mr Albanese is eventually moving.

Surely our politicians should be able to buy houses to live in with their families without the country getting the pitchforks out?

And just in case you think I’m only coming out to bat for one side, the same absolutely goes for Opposition Leader Peter Dutton (who, by the way, makes $432,250 a year), and any of his colleagues.

At the moment, he owns one property outside Brisbane, after selling a Brisbane flat for $3.47 million in 2022, which he snapped up for $2.7 million a year prior.

Look, of course I’d love to be in a position to be buying and selling multimillion-dollar properties. But I’m not going to slam the 53-year-old for doing well after a decades-long career.

What do we actually want to happen here? Do we really expect the leader of the nation to go back to his public housing roots in Camperdown? Do we want our Foreign Minister sharing a rundown studio apartment with her wife and kids in Elizabeth?

The panic about these sales is just insane and it’s time for a bit of a reality check. God knows, there’s plenty of things to criticise our politicians about. But buying pretty normal houses to live in with their families shouldn’t be one of them.