Anthony Albanese hints at taking a hardline approach to staffing allocations after Coalition split

Anthony Albanese says it is not reasonable that Liberals and the Nationals MPs should be given the ‘reward’ of more advisers after the collapse of the Coalition.

Anthony Albanese at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

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Anthony Albanese has signalled he will take a hard line on staff allocations for the Liberals and the Nationals after the collapse of the Coalition, saying it was not reasonable they should be given the “reward” of more advisers.

The Prime Minister said he would consider how the staffing allocation would be distributed between the two parties now the Nationals were no longer part of the opposition, and a decision would not be made until he had finalised arrangements for ministerial staff.

After the Nationals announced they were walking away from the Coalition agreement on Tuesday, Mr Albanese said he would discuss the new staffing arrangements with Sussan Ley and David Littleproud in due course.

“Well, obviously we’ll give consideration to all of those matters,” he said. “But clearly it is not reasonable that there be more staff, or a reward, if you like, for the fact that you had this division that has occurred.

“So we’ll give consideration to it, and I’ll have discussions with both Sussan Ley and David Littleproud about that, as well as the crossbenchers. We haven’t sorted out ministerial staff yet, so there’s some time to go on that.”

The number of staff allocated to opposition MPs is determined based on the staffing levels of the government, with the Liberals as the official opposition due to receive 21 per cent of Labor’s budget. Shadow ministers receive a higher staff allocation to provide them the resources to hold the government to account.

The arrangement leaves the Nationals in the position of having to ask Mr Albanese for adequate staffing levels.

Mr Littleproud said he would discuss staff allocations and resources with Mr Albanese, saying the decision to leave the Coalition had been made on principle though it would see Nationals MPs lose shadow ministry positions, with higher pay and staffing numbers.

“I’ll have a conversation with him today, but I notified him of our decision as well as a respectful thing, and we’ll work through that around what those conventions of the parliament are,” he told ABC Radio on Wednesday.

Nationals leader David Littleproud flanked by Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie and Nationals deputy leader Kevin Hogan. Picture: AAP

“That was taken into account in our decision, and the fact we wouldn’t be shadow ministers, and that meant pay cuts for eight of the people in our partyroom.

“That wasn’t why we made the decision. We made the decision because we took to the ­people sensible, sound policies that were going to change their lives for the better (and) we couldn’t walk away from that.”

Though the Nationals have retained their parliamentary party status, meaning they will receive more resources than smaller parties or independent MPs, they face a likely decline in their allocation.

In the 47th parliament, the Labor ministry had 496 political staffers, the Coalition shadow cabinet had 104 and the Greens 19, figures from February show.

Some independent MPs, including Bob Katter, Kate Chaney, Allegra Spender, Monique Ryan and Dai Le, had only one “personal employee positions” allocated to them, while many others had two.

Mr Albanese cut the staffing allocation for independents from four to two after the 2022 election, prompting criticism that the move would hamper the ability of MPs to scrutinise bills and hinder the democratic process.