Politician Wealth Reality

A comparison dashboard showing, for every tracked politician, career earnings versus declared net worth — with a conservative model of plausible savings in between.

What it shows

For each politician with a populated term_start:

  • Years served: decimal years between term_start and term_end (or today).
  • Career gross: flat salary × years.
  • Est. tax: 2025–26 ATO gross-to-net computation applied per year, summed.
  • Est. living: configurable household living expenses × years (default $80,000/yr).
  • Modelled ceiling: career gross − est. tax − est. living. Ignores investment returns.
  • Declared net worth: self-reported from the politician's register of interests. Not imputed.
  • Plausibility gap: declared net worth − modelled ceiling. Nullable.
  • Flag: a pure-ratio label (plausible / notable / implausible / undisclosed).

How to read it

The gap is a number. It describes the distance between two things: what the politician has told the public they own, and what a conservative model says they could plausibly have accumulated from declared public income alone.

A positive gap does not mean the politician is dishonest. It could mean they: - inherited wealth, - married into wealth, - legitimately invested savings in an asset market that outperformed the model, - ran a business before or alongside their parliamentary career, - hold declared non-salary income (consulting, royalties, board fees) that the model does not capture.

The gap is an invitation to investigate further — not a finding. That is why every row has a source link that points directly at the register-of-interests entry. Read it yourself.

What the model deliberately ignores

  • Investment returns. A politician who consistently invested savings into the ASX200 over 30 years may legitimately hold 3–5× their nominal savings. The model does not compound.
  • Pre-parliamentary income. Most politicians had careers before being elected — as lawyers, doctors, farmers, union officials, teachers, business owners. Their pre-election wealth is not captured here.
  • Windfalls. Inheritance, property sales, divorce settlements, lottery wins — all invisible to the model.
  • Variable parliamentary pay. Ministers earn more than backbenchers. The model uses a flat salary_package field — update it in admin if you want per-role precision.
  • Debt. A politician with $5m in property and $4m in debt has a net worth of $1m. The register of interests captures both sides; the model only compares against the net figure if it is disclosed.

Adjusting the assumptions

The living_expenses parameter is exposed on the page via a form. Default is $80,000/yr — a permissive upper bound for a household that includes mortgage/rent, groceries, childcare, and discretionary spending. Higher values produce a lower ceiling and therefore a larger gap; lower values produce a higher ceiling and a smaller gap.

The default is deliberately conservative in favour of the politician. A $40,000/yr floor would produce much more "implausible" flags — and would be equally defensible. Pick a number you're comfortable defending.

Data sources

  • Register of Interests (federal and state) — declared net worth and source URLs, populated via data/politician_wealth.yaml.
  • ATO — 2025–26 personal tax brackets and offsets (via apps/dashboard/tax_rates.py).
  • Remuneration Tribunal — salary packages (stored on Politician.salary_package).

How to populate data

Run:

docker compose exec web python manage.py seed_politician_wealth

This reads data/politician_wealth.yaml, which contains per-slug entries with declared net worth, source URL, as-of date, pension scheme, and pension source. Every numeric field must have a source URL or the command errors out.

Missing politicians in the DB are reported as warnings. The seed is idempotent.

Disclaimer

Every figure on this page is a transparent calculation against published data. It is not a finding, not an accusation, and not a substitute for investigative journalism. The page exists to make the default reasoning visible — so that when you read an investigation, you can evaluate its baseline.

See full methodology at Tax Methodology.

Last reviewed: 11 Apr 2026