One Nation has accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of trying to use taxpayer money to win over its newest MP, after the government offered David Farley an extra staff member that the party says it never asked for.
In a statement posted on social media, party leader Pauline Hanson described the offer as an attempt to "exert undue political influence" over politicians. She said the additional position would cost taxpayers up to $200,000 in salary.
According to Hanson, the offer fell outside an existing One Nation request for more staff. "David did not request this allocation of staff. No reason was provided by the prime minister for the provision of this staff," she said. The statement added that Albanese and Farley had also met privately over recent weeks, in meetings the prime minister initiated.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that a member of the prime minister's team hand-delivered a letter to Farley's Parliament House office in Canberra on Monday. The letter authorised the MP for the New South Wales electorate of Farrer to hire another staff member.
Hanson said her party decided to make the matter public because voters deserved to know what the government was doing behind closed doors. She said One Nation had spent months campaigning for a fair, transparent and objective way of allocating staff to parliamentarians, and that the prime minister had refused to respond to those calls.
Farley rejected the offer. He did not, however, definitively rule out joining Labor. Speaking to News24 on Thursday, he said he had been looking for political courage and tenacity in a party to represent Farrer, and that he chose One Nation on that basis. "I know that I've still got that courage and tenacity in behind me. I have got a very, very clear and defined mandate," he said.
Albanese was asked about staffing allocations on Thursday morning, including calls from former Labor senator Fatima Payman for more funding. He said Payman, who now sits as an independent, had one more staff member than she did before leaving Labor for the crossbench. He did not answer questions about whether it was appropriate for the prime minister to control taxpayer-funded staffing allocations for MPs across parliament.
Last month, Hanson stood alongside independents Dai Le and Payman to demand consistent staffing resources. "The prime minister should not personally control the resources available to his political opponents," she said. "While this power has always been open to abuse, it has, in our view, been weaponised to an unprecedented extent under this Labor government and this prime minister."
The prime minister's office was contacted for comment.
