Fatima Payman and Pauline Hanson have formed an unlikely alliance to pressure Anthony Albanese over parliamentary staffing allocations, arguing that their offices are being denied the resources needed to handle growing workloads.
The dispute has placed the prime minister under renewed pressure to provide additional advisers to the independent senator and One Nation leader. Payman has been seeking one or two more senior adviser-level staff for two years, while Hanson says her party is being treated unfairly.
Payman faced criticism this week after linking her staffing shortage to the attack on fellow MP Helen Haines while questioning Special Minister of State Don Farrell. She later apologised to Ms Haines after initially refusing to withdraw the remark.
Despite the inappropriate comparison, the underlying concern about staffing levels remains. One Nation has six MPs but only four advisers, while the Greens has 11 MPs and 17 advisers, in addition to the five electorate staff provided to every MP.
Staffing dispute involving Fatima Payman and Pauline Hanson
Payman has the standard allocation of five staff, although the prime minister granted an additional staff member to all senators and House of Representatives members. Albanese said on Thursday that she had the same number of staff as when she was elected as a Labor senator, “indeed one more”.
That response did not address the additional adviser-level staff allocated to other crossbench and minor-party MPs. Independent MP Nicolette Boele, former Greens leader Larissa Waters and current Greens leader David Shoebridge have all received extra staff during the period in which Payman has been seeking more support.
Hanson said her first question to the prime minister would be: “When is he going to fix the staffing?” She pointed to increased support for One Nation and a growing number of requests for help from constituents.
Payman has also described the impact on her office, saying: “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”.
Figures from the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service underline the pressures facing parliamentary staff. Its 2025 workplace report found that 80 per cent of staff were working at or above capacity, while 64 per cent said their workload had risen over the previous year.
Almost half, 45 per cent, said their offices did not have enough staff to deal with the volume of inquiries received by MPs. Mental health support was the most common issue handled by the service, accounting for 42 per cent of cases in 2025-26, compared with 30 per cent the previous year.
The service said the findings showed that heavy job demands remained a persistent psychosocial risk in Commonwealth parliamentary workplaces.
The staffing row has also exposed the political consequences of Payman’s decision to leave Labor. The party’s tribal loyalties have made reconciliation difficult, while granting additional resources to Hanson’s One Nation would mean helping a political opponent whose policies Albanese strongly opposes.
But the dispute comes as calls grow for a kinder parliament following the attack on Haines. The argument being put to Albanese is that staff wellbeing should take precedence over political grievances, and that refusing additional allocations risks undermining his pledge to create a fairer and more family-friendly parliamentary workplace.
