There is strong evidence that there is a widespread problem of bullying and harassment in the offices of Queensland Labor MPs.
Not a majority of MPs, by any means. Many MPs attract long-serving and fanatically loyal staff. But the ongoing emergence of stories of wrecked lives and compensation payouts to former electorate office staff suggests it is more than the occasional bad apple like Merri Rose.
There are two systemic problems at work in Queensland. One is by no means unique to the state. It is that elections – particularly landslide elections that yield surprise successes and deliver MPs whom parties had not expected to get up — are no preparation for many of the tasks required of MPs. One of those is to manage staff in the difficult work environment that an electorate office — frequently first port of call for the dispossessed, the needy and the indigent — usually is. Another is to manage their access to taxpayer resources.
These aren’t skills you can pick up in a couple of hours in an Orientation For New MPs morning. Most people need time and practice to learn how to manage people. A number of MPs in the Beattie Government, and Ronan Lee and Merri Rose are excellent examples, had minimal experience at pretty much anything before becoming MPs. But they were given large salaries, the status and profile of public office and taxpayer resources and no guidance or support on how to cope. Oversight and accountability was minimal. They’re normal people, with the normal range of issues and problems, thrust into a very abnormal environment. It’s no wonder some of them lost control.
But the other problem appears more endemic to the Queensland ALP. A consistent theme in the instances of bullying is the unwillingness of then-Premier Beattie to counsel or manage MPs effectively. A former Beattie Minister has told Crikey of being one of several ministers who told Beattie they felt out of their depth and that the Queensland ALP factional system was not delivering them quality staff. Beattie declined to provide assistance. The Merri Rose case shows Beattie’s judgement was similarly flawed when faced with evidence of a favoured Minister failing to cope.
The approach adopted by the Beattie Government – adopted by default, possibly without any thought for the long-term implications of it — was to have Queensland Parliament (remember, these are taxpayer-funded staff, not party-funded staff) pay out employees, usually with confidentiality clauses, rather than try to fix the system. A rigorous code of conduct could have been imposed on MPs. There could have been compulsory training for new MPs, that would give them a semblance of management skills.
Someone, in short, could have taken responsibility.
Instead, at the bidding of the Queensland Government, Queensland Parliament’s Human Resources area has cycled through large numbers of staffing casualties, handing out compensation, shuffling staff around, covering up for errant MPs.
This isn’t just a Queensland problem. Think Gillian Sneddon and Troy Buswell, for starters. There is evidence that Federal MPs are significantly better at managing staff, most likely because the road to a federal seat is longer and more contested. But anyone who thinks the same problems aren’t going on across the country has no idea. Nevertheless, it’s time Queensland Labor stopped hiding the problem and accepted responsibility for the MPs it puts into State politics.
I spent a total of nearly 8 years as an electorate staffer, primarily working for two South Australian state MPs. The two I worked for were both very hard-working and very intelligent marginal-seaters. They were capable of excellent staff management on their good days, and were both pretty disastrous on their bad days. My electorate office work was at the start of my career, and now a couple of years into work outside such offices, I realise how unhealthy the environment could be at times. I believe the biggest problem is that MPs are given zero management training when they are elected, despite election automatically meaning that you have to manage staff. MPs are, by the nature of the political system, often people with healthy egos, prone to arguements, prone to ‘you’re either with me or against me’ thinking, swear like troopers and can be unwilling to accept personal blame. They can also be charming, interesting, passionate and community-minded. As a staffer, you have to be ready to cop all of this. On balance, I learnt a massive amount in my electorate career and am thankful for it, but there were certainly days which were absolute nightmares.
As a taxpayer I really resent my taxes being spent to save the careers of badly-behaved immoral MPs with silence agreements and payouts. The Queensland Parliament’s administration needs to fully explain why its not reporting workplace breaches and why its using my money and its powers to step outside the industrial relations agendas of this country. If our parliaments are riddled with questionable characters and practices what hope has Neville Nobody got out there on the factory floor?
If the MPs know their jobs are safe with the parliament handing out compensation packages like Christmas presents where’s the big deterrent. Why can’t the guilty MPs be sacked and a bi-election called or these cases put before an Industrial Relations Commission. Bra-snapping, chair-sniffing, bullying and pedophilic practitioners all welcome in our parliaments but not in mainstream society. PS..and it sounds as though that MP down in Victoria who is reported to have mouthed off at the local hairdresser came from the same institution as this mob up in Queensland – the juvenile detention centre.
The silence from Anna Bligh over her Party’s abuse of staff with the help of the Queensland Parliament is deafening. This human resource nightmare at the heart of government has failed to excite even Rudd and Gillard. The national disgrace of such harsh and unsafe work conditions in too many MP electorate offices is demanding of parties and parliaments to resolve pronto. When the Queensland Parliament’s duty of care to its workers is much like that of a Beijing bordello it’s time to call an inquiry. Obscenely degrading payouts like CEO terminations sewn up with silence agreements to oppress systemic employee abuse surely is criminal. If not we need to know why not. In NSW that state’s parliament is singing from the same hymn sheet as Gillian Sneddon puts her house on the market to fund her claim for compensation for going to work for pedophile MP Milton Orkopoulos. She’s being assassinated for assisting police. Here again a parliament is supporting a party over a miscreant MP who landed in jail. Surely the millions outlaid on compensation could be better spent on fixing the problem via training and accountability measures and a bit more. With the Queensland and NSW parliaments propping up Rose, Lee and Orkopoulos like star league players we need to hear from Bligh, Gillard, Rudd and Turnbull as to why political parties value these misfits more highly than other Australians.