'Changes' needed in MPs' pay rise: Seeney Jeff Seeney had "no idea" of the full extent of the MP pay rise when he forwarded Crown law advice to the parliament clerk, granting every parliamentarian at least an extra $57,000 in their annual pay packet. Mr Seeney, who is acting premier while Campbell Newman holidays with his family, announced the 41 per cent pay rise last Monday, following advice that then-premier Anna Bligh had acted "unlawfully" when freezing parliamentarians' pay in 2009. That move raised the base salary by $57,000. However, Mr Seeney said on Tuesday he was unaware the increase would flow on to extra allowances received by all political office bearers. Those increases meant Mr Newman's pay jumped by just under $118,000, bringing his annual salary in line with the President of the United States, and just $70,000 less than Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. A committee chair now earns $206,291, which is more than a minister in the previous government. Queensland MPs are now the highest paid state parliamentarians in the nation. "I had no idea what the calculation would be, I had no idea what the sums would add up to and nor should I have taken that into consideration," Mr Seeney said. In fact, you could have quite rightly criticised me most vigorously if I had decided, based on what I could paid, whether I was going to obey the law or not. That is just nonsense. We will stick with the law, as it is, until the parliament changes it. That is a fundamental responsibility of us as a government, to stick with the law, as it is, until the parliament changes it. But it is clear from the numbers which have produced from those calculations that there needs to be some changes. Mr Seeney said he had felt "uncomfortable" with the extent of the pay rises and understood why others felt the same. I have felt uncomfortable ever since I got the crown law advice; I've felt uncomfortable ever since I have had to deal with this issue. I have a range of other things on my agenda that I could be dealing with," Mr Seeney said. But, he insisted, the blame lay with the previous government. "This is a mess of Anna Bligh's making," he said. This is what happens when a government doesn't administer legislation properly, when they don't understand what they are doing. It is just one more mess that we have to clean up and we will clean it up, we will fix it, but we will do it properly and we will do it absolutely according to law.