Bartlett's Blog

About 3 o’clock this afternoon a page came out of the fax machine in my office.  It was a general memo from the Special Minister of State, stating “I am pleased to advise you of the allocation of an additional full-time Electorate Officer staff position to all Senators and Members.”

I wasn’t in the office when the memo came through and I must admit when one of my staff informed me of it, I thought they must have misread it somehow (despite them being a particularly capable and long-suffering person who has managed to endure working for me for more than 9 years since I first entered the Senate).  As the memo noted, there had been no change to the allocation of three electorate staff positions since 1984, and I hadn’t heard any mention at all that any change was proposed or needed.

Of course, I am always happy to have an extra staff person. There are many issues to cover and extra things to do, particularly if you’re in a smaller party.  But it’s hard not to notice that this change will provide another big boost to incumbent MPs in an election year, which will favour the government the most as they have the most incumbents (which is why they’re in government of course).

It comes on top of huge increases in the last couple of years to the communications allowances and printing entitlements for Members (less so for Senators), plus the broadening of how these allowances can be used, meaning they can now clearly be used for campaigning purposes (including the printing of our own how to vote cards).

Such changes in entitlements are able to be disallowed by either house of Parliament, and there is no doubt that some of them would not have been implemented if the government did not have control of the Senate.

It’s always easy to take potshots at politicians having their ’snouts in the trough’ and I try to avoid doing so gratuitously. However, whilst a case can be made for some changes, cumulatively it has meant an enormous increase in the resources incumbents have access to that their competitors at election time don’t.  Incumbent normally have a built in advantage to start with, as you have more means through things like media coverage or invites to local functions in the electorate to make yourself known to the voter.

It is also worth noting the huge leap in the amount of money being spent on taxpayer funded advertising promoting government policies and programs, the big increase in the number of staff and advisors now available to government Ministers and the recent changes to the Electoral Act which will also clearly advantage the Coalition.

The rationale given in the memo for the extra staff position is that “the current staff allocation of three positions for Senators and Members has not varied since July 1984” and “the parliamentary and electorate workload has increased significantly and become more complex.”  The additional position is “to assist with the workload brought about by improved communications and new technology in recent years.”

It’s probably true that some technology – especially the advent of email – has led to increased communications from the public, as it’s a lot easier for most people to send an email than it is to send a letter.  However, it’s also reasonable to say that technology has increased the work staff are able to get through.  People expect responses more quickly these days, but it is also less labour intensive to respond to emails – especially when they are standard emails about a specific issue.  Bulk email responses take up a lot less time than individually typing and printing out and posting them.

I first started working on a Senator’s staff in 1990 and I’ve basically been immersed in that type of activity ever since.  Technology has meant much greater sophistication in ways to communicate with the electorate and with campaigning in general, and in the sense that it has enabled greater exposure to the public, it has probably created more workload.

However, technology has also provided the ability to do a hell of a lot more.  In that office in 1990, we still used typewriters.  The first word processors were monochrome machines using Word Perfect.  There were no full colour printers.  By today’s standards, the photocopier was primitive, and there was no copy printer and no folding or sorting machines. There was no email and no internet access until the mid 1990s.  There were no mobile phones. There was no electronic searchable record of Hansard or past Committee reports.  Submissions to Senate Inquiries had to be photocopied and posted from Canberra to the electorate office rather than emailed or put online, there were no media clippings online, nothing approximating the databases available today with electronic updates to the electoral roll coming through every month.  And of course, as mentioned above, the resources available for printing of material and for large scale mailouts was much less than what it is now.

There is more legislation going through the Parliament – in a shorter number of sitting days – then there used to be, although most people in Electorate Officer positions don’t work on legislation except for those with the smaller parties.  There are separate Advisor positions attached to Ministers, shadow Ministers and for each non-major party MP, who normally do that type of work.

This change will give even more advantage to the major parties and to the government in particular, who of course also have access to much greater amounts through large scale corporate and union donations. However, I am also conscious it gives me and other incumbents from smaller parties an advantage over anyone else.

According to this news report, the extra staff positions (which are at the most junior classification), will cost about $10 million a year.  The memo does endeavour to make a virtue of the fact that there won’t be any corresponding increase in the relief staff budget or electorate staff allowance (which in effect is a budget for overtime) to go with the extra staff position, using the exceedingly self-evident rationale that “it is anticipated that the additional position will reduce the need for existing staff to work additional hours.”

PS I should note that, while Advisor positions are usually reasonably well paid, in my opinion many Electorate Officers receive fairly low pay for what can be very important roles carrying significant public responsibilities (as opposed to just helping the MP get re-elected, as desirable as each of is naturally think that is).  Some very long negotiations have only just concluded into updating the pay rates for Parliamentarian’s staff. Whilst I’m happy to have suddenly discovered that I’ve got an extra person I can employ to help out in an election year, I would have thought if the government had extra money around to spend on staff resources, they could have put it towards providing existing Electorate Staff with a decent base salary.

UPDATE 12/1: I notice that this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald puts the cost at $15 million, rather than the $10 million mentioned above by the ABC.  I don’t know how either of these figures have been derived, but it’s possible the higher one is taking into account things like extra computers.  I was told today that there has been no ‘official’ determination yet that an extra computer will also be provided, but there is likely to be by next week. It’s a bit hard to see how it could be otherwise, as it would be impossible to work efficiently without your own computer these days.  Whlist it probably won’t be formalised until after the election, one would have to assume there will also have to be an increase in the overall size of office space MPs are entitled to, which will have a cost impact as well of course.

The ABC also quoted Political Scientist, Peter Van Onselen, a former Howard Government staffer, who says “electorate staff spend an increasing portion of their time on political matters.”

To the extent that staffers, electorate staffers, are under increasing pressure, it’s because of the amount of partisan activities that they’re wrapped up in. They’re involved in party fundraising. They operate intrusive databases which invade the lives of citizens. If they stopped being involved in so many partisan activities, they’d probably find that they had enough time on their hands that three staffers, not four, would be able to do the job of servicing constituents.