This is a story about Children Overboard. It's about Vikki Campion. And it's also on the impact of last year's allegations of sexual assault and harassment, brought by former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins. It's about how we can stop shenanigans and behaviour that is much much worse, dangerously so.
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We could do it right now if we could persuade our new Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, to pull a pin or at least to realign that pin. There is a review into the Members of Parliament (Staff) Act right now. It appears to have had next to no systematic input from parliamentarians. And for some reason, submissions closed a week ago with the opposite of fanfare.
The Prime Minister could pull it back, open it up, allow some sunlight into its murky corners and collaborate. Remember just five minutes ago when he wrote, in these very pages, "I am now more convinced than ever that Australians crave leadership that is inclusive and collaborative and that puts the public interest first."
The MOP(S) Act was built in 1984, last century, before the intensities, anxieties and blinding spotlight of the modern day parliamentary workplace. It empowers the Prime Minister to allocate staff for parliamentarians. I asked the ANU's Maria Maley, for whom MOP(S) has been a focus for 15 years, what she thought.
"It's unusual and not appropriate. In other countries (and in the states) parliament itself has authority over the electorate and parliamentary staffing for parliamentarians (through the presiding officers)." Sounds good. Sounds like a plan.
Her view is that prime ministers should only have authority over staffing for ministers.
"Staffing numbers should not be determined by political negotiation or prime ministerial fiat, and [then] not publicly justified."
What we need is an independent body, she says, or regularly reviewed by an independent officeholder, to ensure they are based on need. Anne Tiernan, professor of political science at Griffith University, who wrote the alarming account on ministerial staffers, Power Without Responsibility, knows exactly how far their influence has grown. And how little we know about who they are and what they can do.
When John Howard became prime minister he made sure that there was no longer a public list of staffers. These days even trying to check that someone somewhere is employed as a staffer is next to impossible. Want to rid parliament of nepotism and favouritism? Make sure we know who works there.
Tiernan says: "There is a sole focus on legislation and employment framework - but we must also know more about their role, their influence and how they interface with the public service. It's too narrow a focus."
"This is a good time to have a debate about their role and allocations," she says.
A quick reminder of the background to the chaos. Remember Children Overboard, when former prime minister John Howard wrongly told the Australian public asylum seekers had thrown their children into the water to drown, apparently a sure fire way of getting a ticket to Australia. Staffers never spilled the beans but proper MOP(S) process could make them accountable too.
Former deputy PM Barnaby Joyce shagged staffer Vikki Campion (now his fiancee and mother of his two wee bairns) and the ministerial code of conduct had to be rewritten to institute a bonk ban.
And after Higgins's allegations, Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins, fresh from her sterling work on Respect@Work, was then thrown into a review of the workplace standards at Parliament House. Poor bloody woman. Turns out that there is dangerous mayhem at Parliament House. Welcome to Parliament House and all who survive her.
So reviewing the MOP(S) Act is public would work to protect all those who work there. Not the ones we elected but the others who have next to no rights and even fewer protections. Now the best description of the many and varied people within was published earlier this year by Margaret Thornton, emerita professor of law and ANU Public Policy fellow at the Australian National University.
She made it clear that there were so many different categories of workers it was not possible to "conceptualise it as a single workplace": parliamentarians of course, the staff who support them under what's called the MOPs Act (the Members of Parliament (Staff) Act 1984), those employed under the Parliamentary Service Act) and those employed under the Public Service Act 1999. And that's without contractors, interns, all manner of media workers.
As far as I understand, the Prime Minister has not yet met with independents of any kind on this issue. But he has the chance to be the consensus guy he said he would be through this review. Yes, it's true that the multiple reviews we are currently having were driven by the train wreck who was the last prime minister - but we can all wear our grown-up pants when rescuing remnants from the wreckage.
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Let's remember that the act was drafted in another century, when our country had fewer people and staffers did not need to deal with the avalanche of blowback on social media. Independents were few and far between. This review of the MOPS act gives us all a chance to clean up the mess and determine what's a reasonable level of staffing for all parliamentarians.
I said this last week and I'll say it again, Albanese's decision to slash staffers for all manner of independents looked awful. Was awful. Forced independents to sack staff who had been with them for years. It looked, dare I say it, spiteful and petty.
That aside, the whole process of hiring staffers is appalling. We need sunlight, bleach and open books. Let's clean the whole thing out.
- Jenna Price is a visiting fellow at the Australian National University and a regular columnist.
