{"id":164573,"date":"2025-09-23T23:25:04","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T23:25:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/164573\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T23:25:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T23:25:04","slug":"bainimarama-loses-pension-case-and-court-orders-him-to-pay-5000-in-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/164573\/","title":{"rendered":"Bainimarama loses pension case and court orders him to pay $5,000 in costs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has lost his pension case and High Court Judge, Justice Daniel Goundar has also ordered that he pay $5,000 in costs to the State.<\/p>\n

Bainimarama had sued the government for miscalculating his pension and gratuity entitlements.<\/p>\n

He had argued that the 20 percent salary reduction was temporary and that the calculation should use the original salary of $328,750.<\/p>\n

The former Prime Minister argued that salary levels could only be lawfully altered by formal parliamentary determination, and not through budget notices or ministerial statements.<\/p>\n

\"552212563-1299096018561205-910701316541959865-n\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Bainimarama claimed that his pension should have been $246,562.50 annually, but was instead reduced to $184,921.87.<\/p>\n

He also alleged that the gratuity payment was reduced and should have been $770,507.87, but he was paid $433,296.75.<\/p>\n

The former Prime Minister sought the remaining gratuity balance with a 13.5 percent annual interest.<\/p>\n

In his judgement, Suva High Court Judge Justice Daniel Goundar ruled that Bainimarama\u2019s salary was lawfully calculated.<\/p>\n

He has determined that Section 11 of the Parliamentary Remunerations Act 2014 expressly provides that salary and allowances, once varied by determination, remain effective until Parliament makes a new determination.<\/p>\n

He says there is no presumption that a reduction is temporary, nor that the previous rate resumes automatically. The judge says in the absence of formal new determination, the most recent valid determination continues to govern. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has lost his pension case and High Court Judge, Justice Daniel Goundar has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,63,108356,99,186,184,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-164573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-bainimarama-pension-case","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-finance","13":"tag-personal-finance","14":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}