When Labor announced on Friday night it was only going to allow crossbench members and senators one senior adviser rather than four, it may have been a textbook case of taking out the trash — but also a potential self-mugging.
The decision to give independents a skeleton parliamentary staff will undermine their capacity to be effective representatives. Labor seems to be hoping that they will be positioned to succeed after the teals fail. It also presumably thinks that because it won the formerly blue-ribbon seat of Higgins, it can next time win seats like Warringah, Goldstein and Wentworth.
If that’s Labor’s thinking, the party is not only suffering a shocking case of wishful thinking but making a major strategic error, missing an opportunity to build a strong working relationship, particularly with the Climate 200 candidates, and to keep the Coalition in the wilderness for at least a decade.
Labor should give a role to the teals, and not just for the optics. It needs to keep Liberal heartland seats out of the Liberal column for as long as possible. The likelihood of a Labor win in such seats is very outside to start with and, if they do win, more likely to be short-term — like Maxine McKew in Bennelong, rather than Cathy McGowan and Helen Haines in Indi.
A lot was said during the recent election about Labor’s poor federal results since World War II. The reason Labor was kept out of power for 26 years was because of the DLP split. This could be such a moment for the Liberal Party, which seems to be on a trajectory of Trumpism and irrelevance. Labor could make a surety of that by finding common cause with the teals and their base.
The other factor at play here is the increased fracturing of the two-party system in Australia and nations like Germany and France, who also not so long ago had a two-party divide between social democratic and conservative but have since splintered into about six political formations, with major parties now attracting around 25% of the vote.
Any hope Labor holds of Australia returning to a two-party political split is forlorn. We know that from developments overseas, and from the long-term trends in Australia over multiple election cycles as well. This is an age of liquid modernity, hothoused by a decentralised and ubiquitous social media information system.
While class is still important, there are now different fault lines and political formations. Winning power in the future is increasingly going to be about forming tribes and coalitions. The teals belong to the small-L liberal tradition and are potentially closer political relatives to Labor, certainly on major policy and social questions, than what is now a highly conservative Coalition.
Labor should be drawing a teal curtain, creating a cordon sanitaire that the Coalition will find hard to breach and which will also conveniently free Labor’s hand and resources to win seats in the inner city and outer suburbs.
Being parsimonious with advisers and resources in order to starve the teals out and make them appear ineffective will — if successful — just see those seats returned to the Coalition, not Labor.
And by building a genuine working relationship with independents, Labor is much more likely to appeal to the constituents in these seats and therefore be better placed if it does want to challenge the teals than it would by essentially saying to those voters “you got it wrong and we’re going to punish your chosen representatives”.
If Labor is serious about its own long-term reform agenda, it needs to be in office for the long term — and that means getting used to forming new political alliances.
It’s a beat up. The fact is that all parliamentarian offices in Canberra are overstaffed. Politicians are there to legislate, not to be a substitute for the public service. Far too much time and resource is spent on handling constituent requests and dealing with lobbyists.
Morrison and before him, Turnbull, allowed them to overstaff as an appeasement. Albo is now bringing back the commonsense. Loss of these employees will not actually reduce the effectiveness of the independent politicians one iota.
Such an article should analyze which politicians have which staff level and understand why. The independents in the last parliament were over indulged and it has created the wrong expectations for the new crop.
All MPs have access to the public service. The smarter ones learn how to use public service advice effectively. Advisors selected by politicians are often political hacks and strugglers from journalism.
Plus the odd family member or two.
Wonderful comment, P..X! Perhaps the writer of this article would care to explain why so-called teal and other independent BACK-BENCHERS are worth 8 staff, while government and opposition members in this position only have 4???
As you say..if they need further assistance then the Parliamentary Library and the Public Service are available to them, so why should taxpayers have to fund this questionable rort introduced by Morrison to keep so-called independents on side?
Government & Opposition backbenchers have access to the advice from the staff of the ministers. The independents are on their own
What on earth does an independent backbencher do with EIGHT govt funded staff.? I’m staggered they have more than one or 2. No wonder the cost of our govt so called democracy is astronomical. I never had the faintest inkling there was this much fat and overstaffing. I suppose these are masturbating in offices people?
I think they have what’s called ‘the prayer room’ for that.
Hope Albo is cutting back on his staffing too, including a personal photographer!
Whitlam had three staffers. Howard ramped up obscenely to result in Scotty having 50 spin doctors and over 1600 across his ministry. Gross overstocking with very generous severance pay. should be wound back.
What also astonished me on hearing about the number of senior advisors previously in tenure to each MP was the allocation of four staff for their electoral office. There seems to be an overstaffing culture running rife.
Most of the 2022 independents are new to the job hence not accustomed to four senior advisors therefore they shouldn’t miss them.
… How many of that previous allocation were/are “media advisors”?
About 25 for Morrison alone…………….
The Indies were elected on tight platforms, l think that I would dig deep into those matters and have serious discussions with Ministers & Library to get to the guts of other legislation. To expect to fully cover all legislation shows a deep naivity.
It does not surprise me that electorate offices might have four staff. Across Australia there are some very large electorates and they all need to keep functioning while the elected representative is in Canberra during sitting weeks (not that there have been many of those during the last two years).
And it is the duty of elected members to represent the interests and concerns of the people in their electorates (though many are more likely to follow party diktats than their electorate’s views). Fair enough that there are people in electorates to help support that work.
But I do think that four additional advisors for every independent in Parliament is too many. There is a parliamentary library and parliamentary staff to help members and senators. Plus all these advisors are employed under the MOPS Act rather than being public servants, though their salaries are paid for by the public. In the last year the use of the MOPS Act has been much criticised and it is fair that that a new government re-considers this matter.
The independents are being offered 5 (down from 8) aren’t they? ALP, LNP and Greens get 4?
Sorry about my confusion, but it continues. Can someone give me a link other than the Guardian, SMH etc?
Meanwhile, is the following right:
(1) Independents get one adviser where they had four. They retain their 4 electorate staff.
(2) ALP and LNP backbenchers get four electorate staff and no advisers, as in the past.
(3) The Greens stay at the same number of staff while going from 9 to 16 members. Yet to discover how that works. How many advisers, electorate staff?
(4) Frontbenchers, including opposition, get a gazillion plus 3 as in the past (?).
(5) Extra funding for library and clerk’s office.
(6) Everyone gets a pay rise (I assume).
I presume we are going to get lots of razor gang announcements. This was not a propitious one to start with.
Albanese should make very public frontbencher cuts. He should offer to add to library and clerk’s staff if there is demonstrated extra demand. Those staff to be dedicated to the independents, if that is where the demand is coming from. All levels to be reviewed mid-term.
Then he should move on.
Move on to an ICAC…
One with retrospective powers as well as
providing protection for whistle blowers.
That’s my understanding, and it seems entirely reasonable….
Yeah I love the way the media are calling it a staff cut for MP’s who have not even started work yet.
Did Scotty bribe the Independents by offering a huge increase in staffing? We must get a full history of the ramp up from Howard.
This does have it’s lighter side – Mal “Function” Roberts, last week, decrying the decision, “arguing” that “if he can’t understand proposed legislation put to him he (probably) won’t vote for it”.
Where are they going to get anyone who could “explain” anything to him to his edified understanding?
Sesame Street?
Bert and Ernie’s contracts have a couple of years to run – past Roberts’ next “electorate review”.
He won’t be voting for anything Labor proposes anyway, unless it’s a pay rise.
So all Mr Latham has to say is that Labor should continue to shower largesse on cross-benchers who were literally paid off by Morrison in order to curry their support? Latham suggests Labor is bent on ‘punishing’ the independents, which seems quite ridiculous, especially when there is a very sound argument to support the Albo position on staff numbers. I doubt very much that, given the facts, the demands of the independents would pass the fabled ‘pub test’ of fairness. I’d say any retaliatory threat made or implied about not supporting Labor legislation may be met with the same public response.
David Latham is a registered political lobbyist and director of PR at First Tier Media who dabbles in the world of culture from time to time.
Don’t give up your day job is my advice.