Is there a better gig than being a major party member of the adornment to bicameralism, the NSW Legislative Council?
You get to be paid more than $169,000 a year — $190,000 if you score a committee chairmanship. You get to hire and fire your staff on a whim, without any of the usual workplace protections. You get an eight-year term, and because the whole state is your electorate, you don’t have to answer to any pesky constituents. Best of all, you only have to work about 75 days a year in Parliament, including estimates hearings.
It’s much tougher for crossbench councillors — they have to work out how to vote on legislation and what work they’re going to do on committees. And ministers have their day jobs running their portfolios. But if you’re a major party backbencher, it’s a great job.
And councillors have just had a break, from 26 March to last Tuesday, during which the fate of the best job in the chamber has been up for grabs: the $309,000 role of President of the Council. The incumbent, John Ajaka, retired during the break, having flagged his departure in February.
Gladys Berejiklian decided she wanted Natasha Maclaren-Jones to replace Ajaka. Labor and the minor parties disagreed, with duelling legal advices being deployed about whether Maclaren-Jones was duly elected. There was much shouting in the sparsely-filled chamber and, 90 minutes after taking the position, Maclaren-Jones was dumped and replaced with another Liberal, Matthew Mason-Cox.
Mason-Cox is a hardline anti-abortionist who tried to lead a revolt against Berejiklian’s leadership during the 2019 debate over decriminalisation of abortion. He’s now got the $309,000 prize with the support of Labor and the crossbench, and was duly expelled from the Liberal Party yesterday afternoon. Mason-Cox is a near-15-year member of the council, who had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it ministerial career under Mike Baird.
His presidency will only last until 2023, however, because his staggered eight-year term will end then, albeit with a considerably enhanced parliamentary superannuation payout.
The Losers’ Lounge, as Crikey termed the NSW upper house in our early years, primarily serves the public interest via its committees subjecting the government to an uncomfortable degree of scrutiny, often demanding documents the government has a profound desire to keep hidden. Given the sleaze of the Berejiklian government, this has been a useful tool of accountability, though not as great as NSW ICAC.
But the shouty stupidity of Tuesday might only serve to prompt voters to wonder what exactly the point is of an upper house, especially one that has no electors to answer to more often than every eight years.
I’d hate to be a cynic…..
Things could be worse, imagine if you were Diogenes – condemned to roaming the halls of the NSW parliament, lamp in hand?
Nah, he wasn’t a complete idiot, he only searched in the sun bleached agora at midday.
In round figures, their rate of pay ranges from around $300 per hour to close to $500, depending on what “job” they do. ( I decline to use the word work) A public servant tasked with caring for these folk would be on a modest wage and receive about $60 per hour.
A fine example of disguised unemployment.
Barrelling along no doubt. There’s an excellent series of novels by Shane Maloney (?) referencing the Victorian Upper house as “the Red Morgue”. Lucky Queensland …
Ooh goody, comments bit thin on the ground. Might try to nick even more real estate than usual, Mods. 🙂
Cheers for this, BK, a deft yarn and much appreciated by at least this Crikey diehard up here in Sydney. I’m sure all the black-skivvied Melbournite chin-stroking about internecine machinations inside the Tram Window Greasers & Polishers Union is gripping when your next best option is a night at the Northcote Scrivs’ Guildhouse watching some performance poet wee in a bucket…but there is a lot of cool stuff going on in politics up here, too. Most of it on the Tory side, under the radar, and analytically unloved. Get Rundle north and out to a big Sunday sesh at Hillsong, would be my pitch to PF. He can check out a super-cool Metro that actually works while he’s at it. He might even find Jesus, they put on a pretty seductive show.
I might be overplaying it, but my more trigger-happy side tends to see this affair being more calculated than it appears. As much another volley in the increasingly vicious war for the future soul of the NSW Libs, as simply another grubby bit of opportunist feather-bedding. That the social reactionary right up here reckon it’s worthwhile to so blatantly challenge Berejiklian’s authority – even if a late-career Mason-Cox type is throwaway cannon fodder – is pretty instructive of how these guys are now playing internally. Your ‘sleaze’ knock-off is too harsh, btw, this is really an otherwise stable, effective, pretty popular and even rather ambitiously progressive Executive government. And yet these internal corrosives just keep corroding away. Drip drip drip. I don’t know where the power balance of Mod-Centre Right-National Right-New Guard-Modern/Prayer Group Libs etc etc sits just now – maybe some other Sydney Crikey commenter has an inside line? I think the Tory factions have always been more about personalities than ideologies, so it’d be interesting to try to ferret out how much (for example) a non-NSW Morrison rival like Peter Dutton might be stoking this sort of stuff from afar.
One thing I find unquestionably dispiriting: that the Labor opposition here is willing to play along with such cynicism is pretty dismally indicative that Sussex St has already given up – still two years out, FFS – even thinking about trying to formulate an alternative governing option that might actually sway voters on policy/values merit ie the hard but substantial way that builds a government that has legs. This really should matter to Federal Labor, too, not least because (IMO) of the ‘values’ component surrender it represents in about six or seven key mid-suburban swing seat catchments, where the hard right/Evango push is fast gaining traction. Yes, on hard policy matters there’s usually a fair disconnect between State and Fed issues…but not (I think, anyway) so much on the vaguer ‘value feelz’ ones. A good, attentive (church-going, say) State member (or even just candidate) can go a long way towards reassuring socially conservative, economically leftish voters on ‘lifestyle and values’ questions, even if they don’t have much of a shot at helping get state Labor onto the Treasury benches. Vigorously arguing (better yet, personifying) the ALP values ‘case’ in a State seat may not win you a NSW governing majority but it can, I think, help an embattled Fed ALP member/candidate hold their overlapping seat – even if it is hard to quantify a causal relationship. The ALP used to be a unified and transferable ‘brand’ on ‘values issues’, right across the community. It’s losing that, while conversely the Libs – who never had one beyond a ‘broad church’ minimalism – are now minting a pretty saleable one, via the Evango stuff.
I ‘think’ that’s what’s happening up here in Sydney over in the LNP camp, anyway. Armies of polite young defacto ‘party’ activists, launched from some or other religious ‘factional’ home base, out there slowly winning over the ‘value feelz’ vote in safe ALP seats, even if they can’t win an actual ballot box majority in them in one election cycle. Over-reaction to ‘leaked’ happy-clap footage, religious scepticism that strays too far into disdain territory…it’s a bonus, it just helps tip otherwise fence-wavering swingers more quickly into the Tory camp. Look at the numbers in the SSM vote (and the last election) in the Blaxlands, Lindsays, McMahons, even the Reids. Values, values, values…eating away at previously safe Labor-economic seats, generation by generation. Thing about religious crusaders on the ground is that they have stamina, because they’re not faking the zeal. I honestly reckon Labor needs to start finding/attracting people who can match their ‘true believer’ resilience, and who’ll get and stay out there proselytising a contestably unified ‘progressive brand’ message: via council, state and federal elections, at the footy, church, dogs, clubs, schools, charities, everywhere a community opportunity arises. Preferably in a secular form but hey, whatever works. That is…wins.
So, again, I might be overcooking it, but I’d see a ‘stunt’ like this – a hardline anti-abortionist lifting the middle digit against a moderate (female) Premier, and getting the martyrish boot for it – as yet another small part of the coalescing strategic play for social reactionary internal hegemony. And simultaneously, a future thus-recalibrated LNP’s long game pitch to any vaguely-inclined-Labor voters in seats the current party doesn’t already own who are becoming bewildered/angered by what feels like a distant, arrogant and presumptive pace/tenor of social progressive change. It might only win over some of that vote, bit by bit, but it won’t lose any they’ve already got there (nor does it need to worry about alienating further those they never will). Declarative ‘stunts’ like these are also an important factor in pre-selection battles. Over time the gains – and consistency and conviction is as big a part of this process as the actual values position – all add up, drip, drip, drip.
Speaking of drips, the presence of Mark ‘I Over-Shake One Little Hand… ‘ Latham in this provincial plughole of the politically past-it – I beg your pardon, that should of course read ‘Mighty Valhalla of Executive Majesty & Nation-Shaping Destiny – is IMO a big factor in this, too. I think most of his upper house social issue reactionary posturing is just relevance-deprivation trolling, but it’s all helping shift the CoG and terms of public debate further and further away from the centrist-right place where moderate Liberals – and Labor – can, at least, still compete. He really does need to stop being such a populist tool.
BK, on the up side: yes, the NSW upper house is also as you excellently point out very valuable, as the home of a lot of terrific committee work. Teasing about irrelevance aside, buckets of great scrutiny and diligent policy analysis gets done, and procedurally it’s usually very transparent and accessible to the public. I’d even say that this has been a not-insignificant part of the sustained success of LNP governments of late, actually; calibre ministers like Stokes, Constance, Perrottet and Hazard really take community and expert policy input seriously, and the upper house committee/inquiry system up here is an atypically high-functioning, genuinely egalitarian avenue for it.When they’re not p*ssing around, most MLC’s work hard and diligently. Actually, when he’s not grinding his anti-woke axes, Latham has proved to be one of the better, fairer, more open-minded and productive chairs/committee members, IMO. I also, by the way, think MLC’s are if anything underpaid. NSW is bloody big electorate, geographically. You can skateboard around most of Victoria in half a day, as I understand it. If you could find a reason to, anyway.
Thanks again, Crikey/BK. Do keep an eye on us up here, I think NSW Lib politics is really intriguing just now – not in a terribly relaxed or comfortable way – and something of a mine canary for the whole nation.
OK, Melbourne navel-gazers, back to live coverage of the Williamstown Sander & Sweepers Collective bi-annual office-holder elections..:-)
Less nicking “some real estate” than several continents and the odd orbitting moon.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I would like to think you incorrect about the seething and growing religiosity in those erstwhile Labor fiefdoms in ‘the Area‘ – Blaxland, Reid etc – but you are not.
The bien pissants of SussexSt are so clueless that they seem to think they can ride that tiger whilst applying the rubber ring.
Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.
Crikey Mods, you are LEGENDS for allowing that great grinding slab of prose through, bless you, all is forgiven. Especially since Runders’ doesn’t disappoint in today’s edition, with the latest arcane chapter of obscure southern ALP factionalism.
I feel all Nostradamus…:-)
They still think you can fake true belief. I really don’t care ‘what’ they truly believe in, but they need to find it, fast.
The history of this travesty of democracy is worth noting. With the establishment of an elected Legislative Assembly in 1856, the Legislative Council became a body appointed by the Governor. It remained that way until 1933, when a conservative government, under pressure from Labor Premier Jack Lang’s previous attempts to abolish the council, made it an “elected” body. Elected, that is, by an electorate consisting of members of the Legislative Assembly and, yes, the Legislative Council itself! Members had twelve year terms, one quarter elected every three years.
It was not until 1978 that the Legislative Council finally became a democratically elected body under reforming Premier Neville Wran.
The histories of the Legislative Councils in the other states are also illustrative of the lengths to which conservative interests will go to frustrate change that threatens their interests. In Victoria, for example, the Legislative Council has always been elected, but there was a property qualification for electors which was only abolished in 1952. This and other factors arrayed against it prevented Labor from ever gaining control of the Victorian upper house until 1985.
All part of Australia’s proud history of democracy!