Ahmed Fahour, the man who runs Australia Post, has been revealed as the federal government’s best paid employee, with a salary of almost $4.5m in 2013. For running the country’s letter and parcels business Fahour was paid ten times as much as Prime Minister Tony Abbott was for running the country, and far more than the head of the considerably larger US Postal Service.

Best paid: Ahmed Fahour the country’s best paid public servant

And it could have been more, Fahour donating his additional $2.85m incentive payment to the Islamic Museum of Australia – an institution founded by his brother. Fahour – who has attracted the ire of the nation’s printers and mailing houses for appearing to want to kill off the letters business by charging higher prices for a worse service – has announced he will forgo his $2m bonus this year, in a nod to the $500m loss and 2000 jobs that will go at Australia Post. The controversial figure is no stranger to whopping pay packets, in his previous role at the NAB he received a golden hello of some $13.5m and saw $34m come into his coffers in the four years he was there. Since taking the top role at Australia Post he has hired his own team, many of them also earning more than the Prime Minister, with 20 senior executives at the monopoly on more than $500,000 a year. He famously spent $2.5m taking 78 people to the London Olympics in 2012.

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