Tuesday 24 May 2022 04:01 AM How much Anthony Albanese will be paid Australia's new prime minister with pay ... trends now

New Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been rewarded with a 40 per cent pay rise for his new role and his ministers will be paid huge six-figure salaries.

The Labor leader will see his salary jump to $549,250, a big rise from his $390,813 salary as Opposition Leader.

Deputy PM Richard Marles - who is now Acting Prime Minister with his boss in Tokyo -  is on a very attractive package of $433,063.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers will be on $396,094 to manage Australia's government debt, as it approaches $1trillion.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong is getting $369,688 as a cabinet minister balancing being Leader of Government Business in the Senate and dealing with China's aggression.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, a former Australian Capital Territory chief minister, will be paid $364,406.

Their stroke of good fortune comes as the typical Australian worker suffers a pay cut in real terms because of soaring inflation and $2 a litre petrol prices. 

Australia's most five senior cabinet ministers, sworn in on Monday, are paid at least  four times Australia's average, full-time salary of $90,917 under terms dictated by the independent Remuneration Tribunal.

Labor is likely to have a bare majority in the House of Representatives, with Saturday's election occurring just three days after official data revealed wages in the year to March rose by just 2.4 per cent.

That was less than half Australia's headline inflation rate of 5.1 per cent during the same period, which was the fastest pace of consumer price increases in 21 years, Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed.

This meant most workers effectively suffered a pay cut as their wages failed to keep pace with price increases, with average petrol prices now back above $2 a litre despite a six-month halving of the fuel excise to 22.1 cents a litre in the March 29 budget. 

Mr Albanese during the election 'absolutely' promised he would support the Fair Work Commission if it gave a 5.1 per cent rise to minimum wage earners. 

Australia's most powerful cabinet ministers are far from the best paid government executives with Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe on a $1,076,029 remuneration package.

Australia Post's former acting chief executive Rodney Boys, who briefly filled in following the colourful departure of Christine Holgate, was on a $1,871,932 remuneration package.

Members of Parliament are paid a base salary of $211,250 but if they lose their seat, they are entitled to a payout of 12 weeks' pay or $48,750.

Governor-General David Hurley on Monday swore in a five-member interim cabinet so Mr Albanese could attend the Quad, or Quadrilateral Strategic Dialogue, in Tokyo with his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida, India PM Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden.

The group was formed to counter China's territorial aggression in Asia, especially in the South China Sea.

Mr Albanese's swearing in as PM, just two days after the election is unusually rapid.

It is even faster than Gough Whitlam's swearing in as Labor PM on December 5, 1972 - just three days after the election that ended 23 unbroken years of Coalition rule. 

For the next fortnight, he was a PM with 10 other portfolios as he ran Australia with his deputy Lance Barnard as part of a two-man 'Duumvirate'. 

In 2022, the two most senior members of the five interim cabinet ministers have separated from another Labor politician.