Prime minister Anthony Albanese offered One Nation MP David Farley an additional staff member in what the party has called an “unsolicited” move, made in an attempt to win over the new politician using taxpayer funds.
In a statement posted on social media, Pauline Hanson claimed the move, which would cost taxpayers as much as $200,000 in additional salary, was an attempt to “exert undue political influence” over politicians.
She said the offer was received outside of an existing request by One Nation for additional staffers.
“David did not request this allocation of staff. No reason was provided by the prime minister for the provision of this staff,” Hanson said.
The pair had also met privately over the past few weeks in meetings initiated by the prime minister, the statement adds.
A letter authorising the MP for the New South Wales electorate of Farrer to hire another staff member was hand-delivered to Farley’s parliament house office in Canberra on Monday by a member of the prime minister’s team, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Hanson said she was concerned Albanese was “seeking to use taxpayer funds to exert undue political influence over politicians”.
“We have decided to expose these grubby dealings because the public deserves to know what the Albanese Labor government is doing behind closed doors,” she said.
“For months, One Nation has been fighting for fair, transparent and objective allocation of staffing for parliamentarians. The prime minister has refused to respond to these calls.”
Farley, who rejected the “unsolicited” offer for an additional staffer, didn’t definitively rule out joining Labor.
“The attributes that I was looking for in a political party to represent Farrer is that I need political courage, I need political tenacity, and I made my decision to join One Nation,” he told News24 on Thursday.
“I know that I’ve still got that courage and tenacity in behind me. I have got a very, very clear and defined mandate.”
Albanese was asked about staffing allocations on Thursday morning, including calls by the former Labor senator Fatima Payman for more funding.
He said Payman, who sits as an independent, had one more staff member than before she quit Labor to move to the crossbench.
Albanese did not answer questions about whether it was appropriate for the prime minister to be in charge of taxpayer-funded staffing allocations for MPs across parliament.
Hanson stood alongside independents Dai Le and Senator Payman last month to demand consistent staffing resources.
“The prime minister should not personally control the resources available to his political opponents,” the One Nation leader 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.
