I want to bring in the former long-time Labour advisor, he’s Watson Advisory Executive Darrin Barnett, and former Liberal MP Fiona Scott. It’s good to see you both.
Fiona, a very difficult week in federal politics. There’s no other way to put it. The alleged attack on Helen Haynes, the fallout, the speeches in tribute, and everyone trying to learn lessons from it when it comes to the discourse, but also suggestions that you don’t want to impinge on free speech and so on.
Where do we go as a democracy and as a political community in the wake of that event?
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, thanks, Kieran. And it has been a very emotional week in Parliament. We’ve seen that by the addresses by so many people and, you know, the sheer outpouring.
And, I mean, seeing that orange cockatoo, you know, in her chair, I mean, it reminds me in some ways of, you know, when Don Randall died and, you know, Warren put a flower in his seat. But there’s a lot of questions to be asked. And there’s a lot of things to be answered.
And a lot of it comes down to the civility of public debate and discord. You know, people are pushed into tribes by social media and social media algorithms. And I guess it’s also timely that, you know, the social media bill is also before Parliament to discuss as well.
How do we break through tribes where people believe they can do and say anything, and they’re right within their echo chamber, yet still have a robust democracy where we can still debate strongly our points of view, yet still respect each other and provide a degree of kindness. I enjoyed what Simon Kennedy said before. And, you know, Darrin and I have been friends for a very long time.
We come from different sides of the aisle. We can sharply disagree. We can come to a point where we might disagree on something.
But we’ll agree on the heart of the matter. And the heart of the matter is we want a better Australia. We want a better Australia for our kids.
We might approach it from different angles. And if we can rejig, you know, rather than thinking everybody is against Australia or there aren’t Australian or there’s something wrong with them. Most Australians, whether you’re in the left, the right, the up, the down, it doesn’t matter.
We all want this to be the great country it can be. How we get there may be slightly different. But we only find those spots when we come together.
[Speaker 1]
Darrin, Fatima Payman had some extraordinary claims last night and this exchange that happened late last night in the Senate estimates with Don Farrell, saying that the Prime Minister’s being petty, not giving her enough staff and says, what is he asked the question, is he waiting for a Helen Haynes type attack on her and her staff before he gives her any support or staffing? What’s going on there? Well, Kieran, I think the crux of the issue is legitimate in the sense that Fatima Payman may not have as many advisers or as many people on, you know, those higher levels of pay.
It’s not just about the number of staff, but also the allocation that they are given in terms of the band of the salary. But that was the wrong way to go about publicising it. I have no doubt that Senator Payman and her staff are frustrated by what they see as a lack of action from the government.
But one plus one doesn’t equal two in this instance. The idea that anybody in that building is waiting for a tragedy before acting is wrong. And that just can’t be counted.
It’s the wrong time to make that argument. The broader point, perhaps, but not that argument. It was just the wrong call.
Yes, Fiona, your thoughts on that? That was certainly the sentiment from Simon Kennedy when I asked him a moment ago. The other independents, and I can see why they empathise with Fatima Payman, a young woman on the crossbench and a former Labour MP.
She’s obviously not going to get a lot of sympathy from many in the caucus.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, look, I agree with Darrin and I also agree with Simon Kennedy. I mean, these two things are not conflated. Helen Haynes’ issue and what happened to Helen isn’t about staffing levels.
And for her to bring these two things together this week is just plainly wrong and a really, you know, a very silly way to prosecute her argument. I mean, if it is correct, she doesn’t have the right advisors that an independent needs to have, then sure, that’s a matter she needs to take up with the Prime Minister. But there should be a fairly clear matrix that whether you’re an independent, whether you’re a member of a small party or a larger party, this is the way it works for staffing and it should just be an automatic trigger.
It shouldn’t be an arbitrary decision made by a Prime Minister because this is where you see potentially political weaponisation of staffing happen where, you know, the governor of the day might rig the deck against independents or the opposition party. If we want a robust parliament, it needs to be staffed correctly so that everybody has a fair and free opportunity to prosecute every voice of all Australians. And that’s what it means to be in the House of Representatives.
You are there to represent and that’s what needs to be staffed.
[Speaker 1]
And Darrin, on the way forward now, how do you see it all unfolding? Do we see some signs of goodwill and let’s lower the temperature it was yesterday? How long does it last?
A couple of weeks, I reckon, Kieran, to be brutally honest. Look, it’s a brutal sport politics. It’s a great idea and in theory that we will lift the level of debate and obviously we don’t want to see repeats of, you know, ditch the witch signs and that nasty politics that comes and pops its head up from time to time.
Nobody wants that. But it’s still adversarial and it’s still largely winner takes all. So I think that brawling nature of politics will remain.
What concerns me, look, the rise of online hate, I think, is what stands out to me, having been a staffer and a journo for a couple of decades, that that’s the bit that frightens me. It’s sort of taken over from what used to be, you know, talkback radio where people would listen in and, you know, basically the host would eviscerate somebody and that was sort of part of the fun. People now, the anonymity and availability of social media, some of the things that are said to political representatives and just, you know, anybody with a public profile are disgraceful and trying to educate the community or, you know, warn people that that sort of language, those sorts of It’s not okay that once you start interfering with somebody’s happiness and their quality of life, you’ve crossed the line and whatever we can do collectively to improve that is worth doing.