Tony Abbott’s Going to Make Way More Money After Losing His Job

Tony Abbott lost his job over the weekend. The former Australian prime minister, onion muncher, and long-term MP for the north Sydney electorate of Warringah suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Independent underdog Zali Steggall on Saturday night, bringing his political career to an abrupt and somewhat humiliating end. “I can’t say it doesn’t hurt to lose,” he told his supporters on election night, after conceding to Steggall. “So be it. I’d rather be a loser than a quitter.”

It’s not all bad news for Tony, though. For one, as a direct result of losing his seat in parliament, the now ex-politician stands to receive an extra $100,000 or so a year, according to SBS.

Since being axed as prime minister in 2015, Tony’s been making the annual base backbencher salary of about $207,000. Had he won the vote on Saturday night and retained his seat, he would have continued to earn this much. But instead, as a politician who was elected before 2004 and is therefore enrolled in the Parliamentary Contributory Superannuation Scheme (PCSS), Tones will leave government on a starting pension of $296,000.

The pension is calculated like this: each politician receives a percentage of whatever the base MP wage is—$207,000, in Tony’s case—calculated according to however many years they served. Then they get an extra 6.25 percent loading for any “official” roles that they’ve also taken on. For Tony, 25 years as the MP for Warringah has earned him 75 percent of the base wage (so $122,903); a number of other “official” roles over the years, with loading, have earned him a further $172,827. All said and done, that leaves him with $295,720—a number that is only likely to increase as current MPs’ salaries do.

"The key reason for why they're so large, is that these pre-2004 pensions are linked to current MPs' salaries. Not the salaries that they retired on," freelance researcher William Summers told SBS. "For example, in 2012 all MPs' salaries went up by about a third, and so did all the pre-2004 pensions. So this is just what Tony is going to get in the 2018/19 financial year; come first of July it will almost certainly rise over $300,000." Because Tony’s pension is directly linked to the salaries earned by currently-serving MPs, its value could also decrease if those same salaries do—but William stresses that this is “very, very unlikely."

The Parliamentary Contributory Superannuation Scheme was ultimately scrapped in 2004 by John Howard, and any politicians who were elected to government since then are on a pretty similar retirement plan to the average public servant: they get a certain amount of their salary directed to a superannuation fund. Outgoing politicians who were elected to government before 2004, however, can continue to reap the benefits.

Things aren’t looking so bleak for Tony after all.

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