Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the report of the Independent Review into Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces. I thought I would start with a statement from one of the staffers who spoke to the inquiry:

This is Parliament. It should set the standard for workplace culture, not the floor of what culture should be.

Who could possibly argue with that? But, as we have seen over the past few years, the standard of workplace culture in this place is not that flash. We have heard a lot of hair-raising stories about the culture of bullying and sexual harassment in this place. I'm not going to speak about this, because I can see that plenty of you have. What I do want to talk about is what the report says about 'long and irregular hours of work'—not something that will be touched by the government's industrial relations reforms, mind you, because none of those reforms apply to the people who work in parliament.

When this government was elected, one of its first acts was to take two advisers from every lower house and Senate crossbencher. At the time, the Prime Minister said that crossbench MPs shouldn't have twice the staff of government and opposition MPs. He also said that assistant ministers should get only two additional staff, according to the Prime Minister, and that it was not sustainable for crossbench MPs to have more. What the Prime Minister was ignoring and didn't bother to tell the public was this: assistant ministers have an army of public servants from their departments, not to mention the resources of the party machine, to draw upon. Crossbenchers do not have that. We have two advisers, who have to be across all the legislation coming through. That's our job, and I take that very seriously.

'Respect' is a word that appears on almost every page of the Set the standard report. But what was very clear to every crossbencher in the Senate and the House is that the Prime Minister has very little respect for the job we do, let alone our staff. And this was after the Prime Minister promised to treat the crossbench with respect. We usually get the legislation for each week's sitting in the last few days before the next sitting. Maybe they think that if the crossbench gets the legislation late then they won't bother to go through it; they will just wave it through. But that's something I will never do.

This means that my advisers have to work the weekend before a sitting, and they usually work the weekend in the middle of the sitting. That's 17 days straight by the time we have finished. So, we get all the bills a few days before they hit the Senate. This can mean that my team have to get across a lot of bills. Then there are the amendments, which, again, can be many, especially in a week like this, when we're doing IR. We have to dissect the amendments and then go back out and engage with the stakeholders, not to mention preparing speeches that accurately respond to the legislation in question.

And of course then there are estimates and the parliamentary business of the Senate, holding the government to account on behalf of the Australian people. Then there are the committees that we participate in, which are really important, especially if you are new and want to learn a lot more. That means going to as many hearings as you possibly can to get good at your job, reading all the submissions and, again, engaging with the stakeholders. I couldn't do any of that without the hard work of my team. It's my job to be across all this, and I work long hours and am paid well to do that job for the Australian people.

To be clear, I am not complaining, because I love my job—just as I did in uniform—and I find it an absolute privilege. My concern is for the health and welfare of my staff. When parliament is sitting, my staff regularly work 12- or 14-hour days and sometimes even longer. My electoral staff are also impacted by the sittings. If something happens or a bill is contentious, my office gets flooded with calls, and sometimes they can be extremely abusive. That means the electoral office staff have to take more of those calls, as well as the usual electoral and constituent calls. This doesn't include the hundreds of calls my office gets from veterans.

Recommendation 4 in the Set the standard report is about individual leadership:

To strengthen individual leadership to ensure a safe and respectful work environment …

How can I ensure a safe environment when I don't have enough staff? How can I ensure a safe environment when my staff are often sleep deprived? Doctors will tell you that not having enough sleep impacts your health and wellbeing. If this government really wants to set the standard then giving the crossbench members and senators the staff we need is critical not just for us but for their own wellbeing. Is showing the crossbench and our staff respect really that hard? Seriously!

Question agreed to.