Games companies always underpay. It's never financially worthwhile working in that field (except maybe in social gaming if you are in SV)
Taking any permanent job as a developer in Australia is almost always a bad move financially. You should be looking at contracting.
If you are prepared to work in enterprise software then rates are around $70-$90/hour for mid to high level developers (rates go higher for architect positions too). Contracts typically are 6 months, and almost always are renewed.
(These are Adelaide Java rates - East Coast rates are typically $5-10/hour higher, and I've heard Perth rates are higher still)
Sounds about right. I graduated from UQ in 2008 - I had job offers from Honeywell in Sydney ($56k) and a local Brisbane firm ($45k) but took Microsoft (US$80k). Banks and IBM were offering ~$50k. A couple friends who went to Google in Sydney were at ~$60k, those who stayed in Brisbane were generally on ~$40-$50k. 5 or 6 of us from my graduating class came over to MS that year.
Games Companies: Junior - $35k - $45k (< 5 years experience) Mid Level - $45k - 65k (3 - 8 years experience) Senior - $65k - $85k (5+ years experience)
(skill is also a factor, which is why the experience brackets aren't equal)
At a web dev company doing Javascript / PHP / Asp work it's about $10k - $15k on top of that for each level.
Working at an enterprise doing what most would class as boring work it's probably another $10k again over working at a web dev company.
There are a few high paying ($80k+) jobs for ruby devs that I've seen around too and freelancing pays pretty well but then you have to find the work.