Once again ministerial staffers are front and centre in the biggest political scandal of the day.
Early this year, staff of the former sports minister Bridget McKenzie were shown to have played a key role in the systematic rorting of sports grants, after the Australian National Audit Office used its powers to force them to give evidence.
It reflected the highly problematic nature of a system in which staffers — who are neither elected like politicians nor accountable like public servants — make decisions and dictate to public servants.
Now ministerial staffers of Victorian Labor ministers are deeply involved in the alleged branch stacking carried out by Adem Somyurek, with an adviser to now ex-minister Marlene Kairouz, Nick McLennan, filmed receiving money from Somyurek in a car park meeting. There have been claims, including one recorded from Kairouz herself, that other, more senior ministerial staff are engaged in branch stacking.
It’s bad enough that Somyurek and Kairouz were preoccupied with out-stacking, and abusing, their internal rivals, rather than focusing on their days jobs as state government ministers. But they are at least accountable to the electorate. Taxpayer-funded ministerial advisers, paid — usually generously — to advise ministers on portfolio matters, are not accountable.
Ministerial staffers engaged in party political work — that is, work unrelated to their minister’s portfolio — is historic and common across politics. Activities such as branch stacking, or more acceptable forms of factional warfare, are standard for ministerial and shadow ministerial advisers, in support of either the personal and factional goals of their boss, or in pursuit of their own preselection.
Advising a minister is a long-cherished route to preselection for young politicos on all sides. Figures like Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd, Josh Frydenberg, Marise Payne, Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese all worked as senior ministerial advisers before preselection.
Electorate office staff are also frequently employed — often part-time — in intra-party activities as well as assisting MPs and senators and providing electorate services.
But, increasingly, taxpayers pay for it. According to the Department of Finance, ministerial, shadow ministerial and electoral staff cost taxpayers around $306 million this year, compared to $100 million a decade ago. That covers all employees at the federal level; a couple of years ago, Adam Creighton and Stephen Murray at The Australian calculated there were over 1600 federal and state ministerial advisers alone; on those figures, ministerial staffers alone cost the best part of $300 million across Australia.
But as Creighton pointed out in an earlier analysis, there was also a shift in the appointment of ministerial staff in the later Howard years and Rudd/Gillard years away from portfolio subject matter experts to political staff. Rudd initially cut back the overall numbers of political staff, but the expansion of advisers resumed again after the global financial crisis.
Politicians argue they need political staffers — people whom they can trust and who have the party’s interests at heart, and who are able to bring a political perspective to policy issues in a way that public servants cannot and should not. Ministerial offices also provide a training ground for political talent, as the above list indicates. But at what cost?
Even accepting the argument that taxpayers should fund staffers to provide advice on securing partisan advantage to their employers, if taxpayers are spending $300 million a year funding ministerial staff around the country, what proportion of that is actually funding branch stacking, factional warfare, internal manoeuvrings or self-interested machinations? How much are taxpayers, in effect, subsidising the internal games of political parties, with no end related to the public interest?
As the Andrews government’s “red shirts” scandal demonstrates, there are supposed to be rules around paying staffers — whether electoral or ministerial — to engage in political work. In practice, for anything other than blatant and egregious violations, ensuring taxpayers only pay for political work linked (however tenuously) to the public interest is difficult.
The only way to really curb what amounts to a fraudulent abuse of taxpayer money isn’t tighter guidelines for what staffers can and can’t do, but large cuts to the numbers of staffers.
If ministerial and electoral staff have so little to do that they have time to collect cash in car parks and engage in intra-party feuds, we surely don’t need anywhere near as many of them. A 50% reduction might be a good start — and provide a substantial saving to taxpayers at both state and federal level.
Should taxpayers fund political staffers? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey‘s Your Say column.
Fanciful: if Keane’s suggestion to halve the number of taxpayer-funded political staffers were adopted, they would have to compete for real jobs instead.
“It’s time to cut down on political staffers”
No, it is time to jail those who engaged in corruption. Crikey, it is very clear the branch stackers fully understood that their actions were illegal and were designed to install their puppets into public office.
Why is it that prosecutors have not yet acted against Somyurek? Sacking is a wholly insufficient sanction for the actions of undermining democracy.
What is the writ compelling the proper performance of duty? Mandamus? Is it going to take such a measure to have this systemic corruption prosecuted?
Parasites – and their hosts – should be rooted out.
This is not a Labor or LNP phenomenon, although it appears to be a Labor problem because when such Labor shenanigans are sensationally exposed, the right-wing media piles on in a frenzied attack. By contrast, this sort of nonsense on the conservative side of politics gets no attention, apart from outlets like Crikey or the Guardian. Since examples of LNP corruption are exposed on a daily basis and little of it ever gets into the media, the disgraceful bias of the media in this country is brought into sharp focus. The timing of the expose is no more than a political attack, designed to damage Labor in Eden-Monaro.
I have long been really sceptical about political “power lords”, “headkickers” and “number crunchers”. Since these task seem to occupy a vast amount of time and presumably is a constant process of whealing, dealing threatening, schmoozing, backstabbing and Machiavellian conniving, I wonder how there is time left to attend to the business of running a country or a state.
The answer did come to me.
The answer simply has to be that many politicians don’t actually have “real jobs” in the sense of jobs that are focused upon those who elected them and who they should be serving. Clearly, there is a substantial mechanism in place to facilitate those bovver booted and power crazed individuals and that includes support staff who seem to do – well, very little actually other than keep their power bubble inflated and it obviously requires considerable attention. I have been amazed for decades how talentless hacks seem to be able to rise well above the station their talent warrants – unless you regard the ability to form abundant dirty little alliances as a talent.
I suspect Donald Horne realised this 60 years ago when he wrote The Lucky Country. Nothing seems to have changed apart from the cost of maintaining this “political machine” has increased many-fold.
Can’t argue with any of that IFTL.
“I have been amazed for decades how talentless hacks seem to be able to rise well above the station their talent warrants”.
Not just a problem in politics either. This is a societal issue, big corporations are full of people who have risen way above their talents. The CEO and Chairman’s club is also full of them.
Whatever we is, it ain’t a meritocracy.
Cronyism is where we are at… nowadays mistaken for meritocracy…
If state government members in Queensland had their electorate staff cut they would have one person working in their electorate offices. These people do work akin to the work done in a community centre or like social workers dealing with all the complaints constituents bring to the offices. They have to listen to complaints, to abuse, also deal with protests but they mostly just help people to navigate government systems. Ministerial staffers do the work you are complaining about. They are called policy advisers. They should be doing policy work and if they are not they should be sacked. These mostly young people are quickly burnt out and work very long hours when they are doing the work they’re paid to do and this kind of generalised abuse is unnecessary. What some obnoxious right faction people do in Victoria should be called out and stamped out but you are just wrong to condemn all political staffers.
…. Then there are those that rort the system. Including politicians that would appoint family members – to share the public teat.
That’s not confined to some obnoxious right faction or any other.
There has to be oversight – because we can’t trust morality or someone’s conscience to be their guide – “ethics” can be so elastic.
And a big-stick carrying federal ICAC would be a great start.
[We saw what the Qld Limited News Party did – when they got the chance – to the PCMC in 2013.}
No ALP MP employs their family members in Queensland. Of course there should be federal oversight, although ethics are also absolutely necessary. It is also necessary to understand the ethics of favouring one electorate over another, which is the oldest trick in the LNP playbook. The Brisbane City Council is an excellent example of this type of corruption, where money is spent in Liberal electorates but not in the others apart from basic infrastructure. Council electorates are the same size as state electorates and the pork barrelling is rife. The constant propaganda they produce reinforces that. There is no media oversight of those issues and the Murdoch and increasingly Nine papers either ignore local government or act as the publisher of the LNP press releases.
As elected politicians employ, supervise and direct political staffer(s) ip so facto, politicians must be dishonest? For the staffer, not the public servant, is employed to by-pass public accountability, transparency.
Now there’s a revelation.
The sad reality is there is no revelation. Disillusion, yes.