Opinion
Fatima Payman overstepped the mark, big time, on Monday night while quizzing Special Minister of State Don Farrell about staffing allocations. In a moment of fury, madness or brain fade, the WA senator linked her lack of staff to the attack on fellow MP Helen Haines, asking whether it would take a similar tragedy before she received the same staffing allocation that other senators and members on the crossbench enjoy.
After refusing to withdraw her unparliamentary remark, Payman apologised to Haines a couple of days later. It was a stunningly inappropriate comparison to make. But the fact she overstepped doesn’t mean she was wrong.
It’s not just Payman who is suffering. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has similar staffing issues. One Nation has six MPs in parliament and just four advisers, while the Greens, with 11 MPs, have 17 advisers (this is in addition to the five electorate staff that every MP has). Hanson is being punished for being Hanson, leading a party and advocating policies that Albanese abhors.
The two women have formed what can only be described as an unlikely alliance to try to pressure the prime minister to change his mind, but it’s not working at the moment.
Payman’s staff are having to work longer hours with fewer resources than either a senator from a major party – where the party infrastructure and resources can help meet a politician’s ever-growing workload – or the other crossbench senators – who have extra, better paid – adviser-level staff.
The bigger problem is Albanese’s: he came to office, in part, promising Labor support for improving parliamentary standards and working conditions after the Brittany Higgins mess. He has sole discretion over the staff allocated to independent and opposition parties, and most independents have either one or two additional adviser-level staff. Payman has the standard allocation of five, but has been asking for one or two more people (in the better paid and more senior adviser classification) for two years.
In that same time period, independent Nicolette Boele, former Greens leader Larissa Waters and current Greens leader David Shoebridge have all been allocated extra staff.
The prime minister is now failing to meet the promises he made about a better balanced, more family-friendly working environment in Canberra.
Asked about Payman’s appeal for more staff on Thursday, Albanese’s response was blunt and told only part of the story.
“Fatima Payman has the same numbers of staff now as she had when she was elected as a Labor senator, indeed one more because we granted an additional staffer to all senators and all members of the House of Representatives,” he said.
None of that is untrue. But the prime minister neglected to mention the inconvenient fact that, aside from Payman, crossbench and minor party MPs all have extra staff, while Hanson does not have her fair share.
Statistics from the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service (the PWSS, parliament’s HR department, set up after Higgins) demonstrate just how demanding the job of working for a politician can be. In its 2025 workplace report, the PWSS said that 80 per cent of staff reported working either at or above their capacities; 64 per cent said their workload had increased over the past 12 months; and 45 per cent said their office simply didn’t have enough staff to deal with the flood of inquiries that hit MPs’ offices.
PWSS spends more time supporting political staffers with mental health issues than any other issue brought to the support service, with 42 per cent of cases (a total of 233) dealt with in 2025-26, up from 30 per cent (a total of 139 cases) in the previous year.
“These findings indicate that elevated job demands are a persistent feature of the psychosocial risk profile in Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces,” the body concluded.
Asked by this column on Thursday what her first question to the prime minister would be, Hanson didn’t hesitate: “When is he going to fix the staffing?” The Queensland senator immediately reeled off the reasons that she needed extra pairs of hands in her office – the huge surge in support for One Nation and growing requests for help from constituents being reasons No.1, two and three.
Similarly, the anger in Payman’s voice was real on Monday night when she fumed: “I’ve been waiting two years, chair, and I am tired of looking in my staff’s eyes and saying ‘you’ll just have to deal with this because the prime minister is petty and is taking it out on me’.”
The points made by Hanson and Payman about the impact on their staff are more than fair. It should not be the case that some MPs are more equal than others. So why is Albanese being so hardline with Payman? Simple. She ratted on Labor and left the party.
Labor, more than any other party, is tribal. It never forgives a rat. Remember the example of the ultimate Labor rat, former Labor prime minister Billy Hughes, who quit the party in 1916 over the issue of conscription during World War I.
Hughes was an ardent supporter of conscription but his party was not. After narrowly losing a referendum on the issue, Hughes was expelled and took a squad of MPs with him, forming a new government with his former conservative opponents and keeping the job of prime minister.
And 110 years later, the betrayal of Hughes – the king rat of the Labor movement – has still never been forgotten, nor forgiven. Albanese is one of the most tribal members of the Australian Labor Party, soaked in the party’s values and lore, and the idea of forgiving – or, in Hanson’s case, handing a hated opponent an advantage or an additional resource – is anathema.
But, prime minister, times have changed. It’s 2026, not 1916, and the mental and physical health of staff matters, and there is broad acceptance in the community of this fact.
Albanese’s hardline treatment of Payman and Hanson is a mistake. Amid calls for a kinder parliament after the horrific attack on Helen Haines, the PM should set an example, end the games and allocate the staff. It’s only fair. And the longer he holds out, the more he damages himself.
James Massola is chief political commentator. He has previously been national affairs editor and South-East Asia correspondent, and has won Quill and Kennedy awards and is the 2026 Press Gallery Journalist of the Year.
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James Massola is Chief Political Commentator. He has previously been National AffairsEditor and South-East Asia Correspondent, and has won Quill and Kennedy awards and is the 2026 Press Gallery Journalist of the Year. Connect securely on Signal @jamesmassola.01Connect via X or email.
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