Victorians are paying top dollar for part-time politicians: Shannon Deery

Parliament cannot be just a distraction to the functioning of an executive government keen to push on with an agenda undisturbed.

State parliament closed because of coronavirus. Picture: David Geraghty

Parliament. What is it good for?

It’s a question being asked after a year in which the vital institution at the core of our entire democracy took a back seat.

But does anybody care?

Victorian lower house MPs sat for just 38 days this year — the fewest in 18 years.

Except for Queensland, where an election cut short the sitting year, no other state’s politicians spent less time in parliament.

And at a base salary of $182,000 for a backbencher, that’s almost $5000 for every day in the house.

All up, Victorian taxpayers are forking out more than $30m a year in salaries for our part-time pollies.

Add allowances, cars, offices, parliamentary staff and other running costs and it’s a huge expense. And we’re not getting bang for our buck.

Next year the government has pencilled in 45 sitting days, about the standard for this parliamentary term.

Of course, attending parliament is not the sole job of our MPs. Just ask Daniel Andrews. Has he ever had a busier year or worked harder than he did this year? The same goes for Health Minister Martin Foley, Jenny Mikakos before him, Deputy Premier James Merlino, and the rest of the Crisis Council of Cabinet.

But that doesn’t obviate the need for parliamentary scrutiny.

Parliament serves many functions — forming a government from among its members, making laws and updating old ones, examining and approving expenditure and representing the people chief among them.

But the most important is holding the government to account for its policies and actions.

Associate Professor Tom Daly, deputy director at the Melbourne School of Government, University of Melbourne, says that increasingly across the Western world, parliaments are becoming less powerful and executive governments are becoming more powerful.

Never has that been more evident than this year. Australian governments needed little encouragement to shut down parliaments as the pandemic hit in March. Longer was the time it took to convince them to open up again.

In Victoria we did away with the traditional cabinet, too, replacing it with a gang of eight who navigated the state’s pandemic response.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - NewsWire Photos December 10 2020: Premier Daniel Andrews during question at Victorian Parliament on Thursday afternoon. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Geraghty

The group wielded extraordinary, unprecedented powers, placed Victoria in a state of disaster, and kept us locked in our homes. With parliament shut, there was limited scrutiny of the action being taken.

The government went months without having to answer questions in parliament. No one to check how or why billions of dollars were being spent, or whether the measures being put in place were an overreach or indeed did not go far enough.

The opposition, and the Greens, called for the establishment of a parliamentary oversight committee. It would have offered some protection to an opaque, sometimes secretive, governance structure.

While parliament was closed for health reasons, many other people, our essential workers, continued to go to work daily. Surely our parliamentarians fit that category.

But in the midst of a crisis, parliament seemed a needless distraction, and the pandemic legitimised doing away with it for some time.

Prof Daly points out that when compared to other countries, Australia performed poorly in keeping parliaments going.

“Strong criticism has been levelled at the perceived marginalisation of parliament, from across the political spectrum: critics have offered that the lack of any plan for sitting by alternative means treats parliament as ‘surplus to requirements’; and is ‘baffling’ given successful measures adopted in comparable Western states, including Canada, the UK, and across the EU,” he says.

In the UK and Canada, things got up and running much quicker. There was a determined effort to have parliaments sit. In Victoria, there wasn’t even a date set for the resumption of parliament, unlike in NSW or Tasmania, after it was first shut down.

Spring Street has gone quiet now. With Christmas less than a fortnight away, Victoria’s MPs have packed up and gone home.

Now it will sit empty until February 2 next year.

When MPs return for that first sitting day of the year, they’ll know they will have just 44 more days in the house left for 2021.

Parliament should sit as often as possible, with participation from as many MPs as possible. It cannot be just a distraction to the functioning of an executive government keen to push on with an agenda undisturbed.

It’s time to ask whether the 19th century institution is keeping up with 21st century politics.

And if not, how can it be remedied?

SHANNON DEERY IS HERALD SUN STATE POLITICS EDITOR