The story in Sunday’s Canberra Times about increases in senior executive salaries in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet is wildly inaccurate.

Senior executives across PM&C DID NOT receive a pay rise of 12 per cent in the past year.  The vast majority of our senior executives received an average pay increase of 2 per cent on the 28th of January 2016.

The figures quoted in The Canberra Times article were sourced by the journalist from an FOI request.  The journalist has erroneously extrapolated pay increases for two individual senior executive to the whole SES.  These pay increases were linked to performance. 

Had the journalist contacted the department for clarification we could have easily corrected his miscalculations.

The majority of staff will receive a 5.9 per cent pay rise after recently voting for a new the enterprise agreement.