Can a member of parliament job-share? These childhood friends want to find out

Lucy Bradlow and Bronwen Bock want to be the first politicians able to take care of the kids as the scores of other MPs bicker in Canberra’s Parliament House.

The childhood friends are planning to run as job-sharing MPs – working one week on and one week off, alternating trips to Canberra – by jointly nominating as the representative for the inner Melbourne seat of Higgins.

Lucy Bradlow (left) and Bronwen Bock in Central Park, Malvern, last week.Credit: Simon Schluter

But they face an uphill battle overcoming constitutional barriers to running as a duo – a novel approach that has not been replicated in any similar nation. There is also the matter of whether voters would accept their representatives being split on a conscience vote.

Bradlow and Bock argue allowing MPs to work in tandem would allow more mothers, carers and disabled people to be involved in politics.

“The key thing is that when people stand up in question time, they refer to the representative for Higgins. They don’t refer to a person’s name,” said Bradlow, a former lawyer who previously worked for Labor’s Kristina Keneally.

“We are doing this first and foremost to try and get better representation for the people of Higgins.

“Our hope would be that if it gets up and we are successful, that would open the door to many, many more people being able to do this. Obviously, not everyone is going to want to job-share.”

The pay for a backbench MP is $225,000 a year, and it is expected that if elected, the pair would split the salary.

The aspiring MPs approached community independent funding vehicle Climate 200 to discuss potential financial backing, but the group founded by Simon Holmes à Court downplayed the prospect.

“Climate 200 is approached informally every day by individuals and community groups. We are not presently considering support in Higgins,” a Climate 200 spokesman said.

Constitutional law expert Professor Kim Rubenstein.

The group’s preferred candidates have mostly campaigned on the issues of climate change and restoring integrity to governing. The Higgins duo nominated those issues as their top priorities, along with lowering living costs.

Bradlow and Bock, an investment banker, are armed with answers to tricky questions about how their arrangement would work.

What if they disagreed on policy? “Lucy and I have very similar beliefs and values,” Bock said.

And if one of them needed to quit? “It would have to go to a byelection because people are voting for both of us,” Bradlow explained.

They would work one week on and one week off, with a handover at the end of each week. To avoid draining public funds, only one of the women would travel to Canberra for sitting weeks.

Constitutional law professor Kim Rubenstein, a gender equity advocate, has advised the aspiring MPs it may be permissible to run as joint candidates.

A similar proposal was rejected by English courts in 2015, but Rubenstein believes Australian laws could be more accommodating.

Rubenstein has met federal crossbench MPs and Labor MP Kate Thwaites, who leads a committee inquiry into electoral reforms, to discuss amending the Electoral Act to allow for job-sharing. The Albanese government said it had no plans to do so.

If the law is not changed, Bradlow and Bock will cram both their names into the box designed for an individual candidate name on Australian Electoral Commission nomination forms. If the AEC rejects the nomination, the pair said, they would fight the commission in court.

Rubenstein said: “To not allow it might go against the Sex Discrimination Act because the proportion of women who are full-time is lower.”

Women comprise about 39 per cent of lower house MPs and 57 per cent of senators.

Research from the Australian Parliamentary Library, prepared in March for Liberal frontbencher Andrew Bragg, cast doubt on the proposal’s constitutionality.

“There are several constitutional provisions referring to senators and members that could be argued to prevent such an arrangement, at least on a literal reading,” its research paper stated.

“Drawing from the arguments of Professor Rubenstein, it may be that the High Court would consider that these provisions ought to be interpreted in a way that permitted job-sharing, as that would be most consistent with the principles of representative government and democracy prescribed by the Constitution.

“However, this is not certain and [the parliamentary library is] of the view that there would likely be strong counter-arguments raised, based upon the plain meaning of the provisions in question.”

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