Hanson says Albanese driving One Nation staff to point of collapse

Pauline Hanson has accused the prime minister of driving her staff to the point of collapse by refusing to allocate One Nation extra resources as the party gains electoral ground and out-polls the official opposition.

Hanson said on Tuesday that Anthony Albanese was wielding his power to disadvantage his political opponents at the expense of the health of her staff, who were so stressed they were close to physical collapse.

“The Australian people’s personal struggles are worse than ever – my staff have had to talk people down from the edge of taking their own lives,” she said in a post on social media.

Albanese has slashed staffing allocations for opponents since taking office, breaking decades of precedent for standardised resourcing in the parliament.

This spurred a cross-party push to strip the prime minister of his discretionary powers last year, but the Greens backed down from launching an inquiry, saying they would wait for the outcome of an independent review by the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service.

That review has since found that security in electoral offices was a major concern and staff faced increasing threats.

“Staffing levels overall are not adequate to meet all the parliamentary and electorate work demands placed on staff in some offices,” the review, released in August, said.

“Workload in parliamentarian offices remains consistently high throughout the year, driven by constituent expectations and the demands of a 24-hour news cycle. Constituent engagement and advocacy are major workload drivers, with offices handling a high volume of complex queries related to government services.”

Hanson said she was making her appeal public because behind-the-scenes negotiating had failed. She had said in February she had a “very good” meeting with the prime minister after One Nation recruited Barnaby Joyce and, with five MPs, qualified for minor party status.

The party grew again this month, adding David Farley after he seized the seat of Farrer from the Coalition in a historic byelection.

“I am the leader of a political party that is polling more than major political parties,” Hanson said. “The government has failed to staff One Nation anywhere close to a functional level. This is pure bloody-minded politics by the Labor Party,” she said.

“I have been going to both the prime minister and Special Minister of State Don Farrell since the staff cuts. I have been begging and pleading with them to give us more staff to deal with the heavy workload.”

Hanson said a staff member under extreme stress had written to the prime minister directly, but had been ignored.

“Labor hasn’t even responded and couldn’t care less,” she said.

The One Nation leader said she had five electorate officers – the standard number of staff assigned to each MP – who typically handle constituency matters, media and stakeholders rather than legislation.

More senior, higher-paid staff are allocated at the prime minister’s discretion.

Hanson said she had two parliamentary advisers, compared with Greens leader Larissa Waters’ 15, and the prime minister’s 59.

Independent senator David Pocock said on Tuesday that he had been forced to fundraise to employ additional staff to keep up. He said his office was busier than ever, and received more than 1200 emails every week.

“I have consistently argued for personal staffing allocations to be set independently against a needs-based formula, rather than by the prime minister of the day. This, to me, seems the fairest approach,” he said.

The Coalition joined the outcry last year over staffing allocation – joining the protests already issued by crossbenchers including Pocock, Lidia Thorpe and Jacqui Lambie.

Independent senator Fatima Payman has accused the prime minister of withholding staff to punish her for defecting from Labor.

Liberal senator Andrew Bragg claims Albanese has tried to leverage the staffing allocations for political favours, offering former opposition leader Sussan Ley extra resources in exchange for her support for since-abandoned freedom-of-information restrictions.

A government spokesperson said Labor had already provided extra staff to assist with increasing workloads. The government gave every MP an extra electoral staffer in the previous parliament, taking the total to five, before last year’s cuts to senior advisers.

“Staffing allocations are made based on a range of considerations. Where additional resources are allocated, they are done so with careful consideration,” the spokesperson said.

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