Parliamentary Pension Reality

Per-politician projection of the lifetime taxpayer cost of federal parliamentary pensions.

What it shows

For every tracked politician with a term_start date:

  • Scheme — PCSS (pre-Oct 2004, defined benefit), PSSAP (post-2004, accumulation), a state DB scheme, or 'not disclosed'.
  • Years served — decimal years between term_start and term_end (or today).
  • Annual pension — curated estimate if available, otherwise the PCSS approximation for vested members.
  • Already drawn — years since retirement × annual pension (PCSS only).
  • Projected future — remaining life expectancy at retirement × annual pension.
  • Lifetime cost — already drawn + projected future.
  • Note — plain-English status (drawing, still serving, not yet vested, not disclosed).

How to read it

The headline figure at the top of the page is the sum of projected lifetime costs across every politician currently drawing a PCSS pension. It is a ballpark — assumptions about indexation, life expectancy, and commutation choices vary by individual. The order of magnitude is what matters.

Every number is either (a) derived from a formula you can read in the methodology page, or (b) manually curated from a published source and linked in the 'Source' column. Nothing is imputed.

Politicians with pension_scheme == 'UNKNOWN' render as 'not disclosed' and never contribute to projections. That is by design — the point of this page is to make the known entitlements visible, not to guess.

How it is computed

PCSS (pre-9 Oct 2004)

annual_pension ≈ final_salary * min(0.75, 0.50 + 0.025 * max(0, years - 8))
  • Vesting: 8 years of service (≥ 2 terms).
  • Payable from age 55 or immediately on retirement depending on pre-reform status.
  • Indexed annually.
  • Commutation: up to 50% can be taken as a lump sum.

The coefficient 0.025 per year beyond 8 is a simplification of the actual PCSS accrual table. The real schedule has slightly different rates for each year. See apps/dashboard/pension_rates.py for the constants and the Parliamentary Pension Schemes explainer for the history.

PSSAP / post-2004 accumulation

balance ≈ sum over years of (salary * 0.154) compounded at 6% nominal
  • 15.4% employer contribution, negotiated above the standard SG rate.
  • Nominal 6% return assumption — real-world returns vary significantly.
  • No lifetime guarantee.

Life expectancy

  • Remaining life expectancy at age 65: ~21 years (ABS life tables, gender-neutral).
  • For politicians who retire before 65, the projection extends proportionally.

Limitations

  • Indexation is not modelled. The dashboard uses flat nominal dollars. In practice PCSS pensions are indexed annually, so real lifetime payouts grow over time.
  • Commutation is not modelled. A member who commutes 50% of their pension as a lump sum at retirement trades ongoing pension income for an upfront cash amount.
  • Pre-parliamentary super and other sources are invisible to the dashboard — politicians with personal super, investment properties, or consulting income are not captured here.
  • Exact PCSS entitlements are administered by the Department of Finance. The dashboard figures are dashboard-accuracy approximations.

Data sources

How to populate data

Scheme assignments and annual estimates are curated in data/politician_wealth.yaml and loaded by:

docker compose exec web python manage.py seed_politician_wealth

Every numeric field must have a source URL or the command errors out.

Last reviewed: 11 Apr 2026