Where the money is. The Australian Bureau of Statistics this morning released a study showing where Australia’s highest paid wage and salary earners live and how quickly their income has been growing. It makes for a fascinating way of checking how your suburb rates.

On average, Australians earned $46,599 in wages and salaries in 2008-09; up from $43,921 in the previous year. Table 1 shows that the Australian Capital Territory had the highest average annual income from Wages and salaries in each year between 2003-04 and 2008-09, recording $54,747 in 2008-09.

From 2003-04 to 2008-09, the average annual growth rate in average Wage and salary income in Australia was 4.8%.

Western Australia recorded the highest growth rate of average annual Wages and salaries between 2003-04 and 2008-09 (6.9%), followed by Queensland (5.6%). The high growth rate for Western Australia resulted in that state having the second highest average annual Wage and salary income in 2008-09 ($50,438), moving up from fifth highest in 2003-04 (overtaking New South Wales, which had held second place up until 2007-08).

For most States and Territories, and for Australia as a whole, average annual growth rates for regions outside of capital cities either matched or were slightly higher than those for capital city statistical divisions (SDs), although average annual incomes were considerably higher in capital city SDs.

Figures for other states and territories are on The Stump blog.

Easier said than done. Promises of tough financial measures are easy to make but harder to deliver with the government of Greece providing the latest example. In return for its latest financial bail-out the country promised the European Union and the International Monetary Fund that it would further tighten the screws on public spending, further cut public service wages and accelerate plans to privatise many assets.

Now the governing PASOK party is finding that the unions are threatening strike action. The English edition of Kathimerini reports this morning:

A similar lesson here? Perhaps Treasurer Wayne Swan is learning a similar lesson. All those repeated assertions that the budget of 2012-13 was already in surplus (!!) are now being replaced with the more honest description that a return to surplus is still the intention.