In this suburb you need to earn $2.3m to be in the top 1%: How does your area compare?

In one Brisbane suburb, the top 1 per cent of income earners take home more than $2.3 million a year on average, while half-a-dozen other riverside neighbourhoods bring in more than $1.5 million.

But how wealth is distributed across Brisbane is changing – slightly.

Five years ago, the leafy enclave of Pullenvale in Brisbane’s west, where sprawling homes sit on manicured acreages, was the suburb where the top 1 per cent earned the most.

Pullenvale now ranks seventh on the list, usurped by the traditional blue-chip suburbs of Ascot and Hamilton, where the top echelon of earners are making an average of $2.2 million a year.

Brookfield, Hendra and Yeronga have fallen out of the top 10 completely, replaced by Fig Tree Pocket, Newstead and Norman Park.

So what’s changed?

This masthead has analysed income data from the Australian Tax Office for the 2022-23 financial year, the most recent available.

The data is based on individual, pre-tax income, including salary and wages, and business and investment income. It captures people receiving sizeable rental income and dividends, but does not take in individuals’ assets, such as property and shares.

In 2022-23, inflation spiked, which generally had a greater impact on those who rely on business and investment income, rather than a salary.

The data can be skewed by one or two ultra-wealthy individuals having a really good or rather poor year financially. But it can also be affected by a high-earning individual buying into a sought-after suburb, and another selling up.

Among Newstead’s new residents in 2023 was former Domino’s Pizza boss Don Meij, who paid $12.95 million for the penthouse in Cavcorp’s Luminare project. (He sold two years later to start a new food-based business in the United States.)

That same year, Newstead lost one of Brisbane’s best-known deal-makers and company directors, Howard Stack, and wife Hilary. They sold their luxury sky home in Mirvac’s Pier development for $16 million to spend more time at their bolthole on the Gold Coast.

Stack, a former corporate lawyer and independent director of Flight Centre, was chairman of Brisbane Grammar School for 30 years before he retired.

Also in 2023, mining entrepreneur Adam Beswick bought the heritage riverfront estate Amity House in New Farm for $20.5 million, from Brisbane architect Tony Dempsey and his wife, Poppy.

Beswick was no stranger to New Farm, having sold a Queenslander on nearby Hawthorne Street for $2.35 million in December 2021. His company, M2P engineering, sells construction and engineering equipment to Australian mines.

Meanwhile, among the top 1 per cent living in Ascot are power couple Trevor Lee and Keri Craig-Lee.

The rich-listers have lived for years in their sprawling mansion, from where they oversee Lee’s cattle-rearing and meat-processing empire, Australian Country Choice, and his wife’s eponymous fashion business and emporium in the Brisbane Arcade.

Fig Tree Pocket is home to multi-millionaire iron ore magnate Clive Palmer, who has created a massive riverfront compound for his family.

Palmer bought former Linc Energy boss Peter Bond’s Rivergum Retreat mansion in 2018 for $7.5 million and now has three adjacent properties, one with river frontage.

He ruffled feathers among neighbours in 2020 by building a huge concrete wall dubbed The Great Wall of Palmer.

Outside the movements of the ultra-wealthy, KPMG urban economist Terry Rawnsley said capital gains had a big influence on taxable incomes from year to year.

“If someone sold an investment property and made a $500,000 profit, that can influence the distribution of income in a local area,” he said.

“A business owner might sell a business for $10 million, that would have a bigger impact. These are the one-off events that can make some suburbs appear unusually wealthy in a particular year.”

Sydney was the only Australian capital where the top 1 per cent in three suburbs earn more than $5 million a year.

In eight Sydney neighbourhoods – all of them waterfront suburbs – the 1 percenters have an average income between $3 million and $5 million.

Brisbane has no suburbs in either of those categories.

Across all of Sydney, the top 1 per cent’s average earnings were more than $1 million in 2022-23.

The next highest was Perth, with average earnings of $928,762 a year for the top 1 per cent, followed by Melbourne with $792,491.

The average earnings of Brisbane’s top 1 per cent were $650,220 – nearly 11 times the city’s median of $59,968.

The suburb with the highest 1 per cent average income of anywhere in Australia was Cottesloe in Perth, where you need to be bringing in $36 million a year on average to be in that suburb’s top 1 per cent.

with Matt Wade

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Marissa Calligeros is a journalist at Brisbane Times. She was previously an editor at The Age.Connect via X or email.Craig Butt is the National Data Editor of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X, Facebook or email.AdvertisementAdvertisement