People do not become PM of Australia or President of the US for the "salary". I don't believe Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd or Barack Obama aspired to the top job, for the pay. I can't envisage Mr Obama saying to Mrs Obama "I think I'll run for president, its pays 8 grand a week, that a lot better than I'm getting down at the car wash."

So our prime ministers is worth $107,338 per year more, something wrong with that.
Philip S,
Yes and, according to Foxy that's ok especially that the ALP PM's salary increased by almost 200 Grand since Howard the Terrible.
I find just so disgusting how much money is syphoned off by our public servants for nothing but more expenses in return.
I just hope that the Coalition will rid this country of the Peter Principle appointees from the ALP era.

Dear Indy,

Our political system needs reform.
Political candidates do have positive
qualities but when they have to be party
to pre-selection decisions that reward
patronage, not merit, it makes things
difficult.

Foxy,
glad you see it in the real light. Going back to the hypocritical & insensitive title of this thread
I would like to add that given the massive population & logistics in the indonesian archipelago they're doing several hundred times better in keeping control than our authorities have recently.
I have asked this before here, imagine 220 million Australians. Scary eh ?

BTT

PhilipS if there's one thing I've noticed about Indonesian representatives it's that they consistently put Indonesian interests first.

It was illuminating to watch the Q&A broadcast from Indonesia a while back. Despite any anti-(Indonesian)-establishment labels that might have been conferred on them the Indonesian panelists were very much for putting Indonesian interests first, and accepted little to no blame for the illegal immigration racket.

A similar ABC selected panel in Oz would have been loaded with QC's, MC's and wannabe JC's all pushing the line that Oz owed the rest world a living, and our borders should be wide open.

Not suggesting for one minute that we should all toe-the-line, but we should not be surprised when countries,like Indonesia, use every trick in the book to preserve their territorial integrity--outside of OZ it is very much the norm .Nor should we be surprised if our own border controls are hard to implement with so many hangers-on working flat out (often with govt funding) to stifle them at every turn.

I found it odd that Mr Abbott was running around during the election campaign making unilateral statements concerning Indonesia without any reference having been made to the Indonesians in the first place. His payments for information internally to Indonesian citizens and his buying boats from Indonesians. Would we tolerate the Indonesian government making like statements about Australia without any reference to our government, I think not. Mr Abbott most likely thinks we are still in the days of colonialism and he as a "superior" can dictate to the "lesser" in Asia.