Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Imagine this: you're in a fight. Your opponent picks their weapon and then they pick yours. You don't get a say. Whatever they choose, that's what you're working with. That's politics today, and that's how office resources work. The Prime Minister picks his party's weapon and then he picks for everyone else—not the government, not the cabinet, just the Prime Minister. He picks how many staff he gets and then he picks the opposition's staff and the crossbenchers' staff. He can give or take staff. He can add more for himself and his mates and take from others. He could decide that only the Labor Party gets staff from now on. That's within his power. This isn't fair. It's risky. It hurts democracy, where every voice matters.

Staff are a resource. People talk about how important they are—and they are—but they're basically there to help you do your job. I couldn't do my job without a phone or a computer or an office printer. I couldn't do my job without tables or chairs. All of those things are supplied to me as office resources. It's the same with staff. They help you do your job. The Prime Minister can say, 'If you vote my way, your office gets more resources; if you don't, you will lose office resources.' It's all legal. No politician can do everything alone. You can't answer every phone call or reply to every email. You can't read every page of legislation about every policy that's before the parliament. Staff are there to help us to help you. I don't need to convince the Prime Minister of the value of staff. It's something he and I agree on. After all, he's added 50 adviser positions to his side of politics since his election, and he's cut 41 from the crossbench. That kind of thing lingers with you.

Think about a key vote. If it doesn't go the government's way, the Prime Minister of the day could take away our staff, and there would be nothing we could do about it. So, every vote I take, I take it knowing I could be punished for it. It's like opening a box of chocolates: you're just never sure what you'll find on the inside. No politician could honestly say that such a threat has absolutely zero influence on them. I'm not accusing our current Prime Minister of anything. I'm just saying that, for our current Prime Minister and every Prime Minister that will follow him, this power is a recipe for corruption. Our system is supposed to let voters pick who represents them. But one person, the Prime Minister, can decide how good you are as a representative.

When I ask them if they think there's something wrong with the current model, the Labor Party says: 'This is fine. It's always been this way.' I don't get it. We change how things are done all the time. That's how progress gets made. What's the point of being in government if you're there to do things the way they were done when you were in opposition? Staff allocations are office resources. They should not be decided by anybody who stands to benefit from the decision. It is an obvious, blatant conflict of interest. It's a corruption risk, and it's a problem that we can fix in an instant.

An independent body should decide what's fair, openly and without bias. The Remuneration Tribunal is such a body. It's already responsible for the pay and conditions of members and senators. Why? Because we decided that politicians shouldn't be deciding their own pay and conditions. How would you feel if the Prime Minister could decide it for everyone? If he decided to give me an extra $100,000 a year because he liked me but cut the pay of someone else on the crossbench by $100,000 because he didn't like them, we'd call it a scandal. We'd be up in arms, because that would be an abuse. So why do we trust the Prime Minister to set office resources?

Nobody's offered me extra staff. Nobody's threatened to cut them. I'm not accusing our Prime Minister of anything corrupt. All I'm saying is that the rules allow for it. He's not responsible for the current rules. He didn't decide them. But, if he decides to do nothing about them and he doesn't change anything about them, that's something he will have to wear. This is not just about fairness. It's about integrity. It's about making sure that our political system is not at the mercy of the whim of one person. It's about making sure that every representative, no matter their party, has the resources they need to serve their constituents well. We need an independent decision-maker to have the power to decide what's fair. Without it, every decision we make risks being compromised.