Why the teals need to unite and see red on adviser numbers

You can’t blame Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for wanting to cut the number of crossbench advisers from four to one for independents. Four advisers is a recent thing apparently, up from two when Craig Kelly went to the crossbench and threatened the Morrison government with non-support.

But now there’s an army of like-minded independents who can coordinate. Between them, the teals and David Pocock would have 28 staffers under the system the prime minister wants to abolish, with One Nation and the Jacqui Lambie Network with eight each. The Greens have also taken a cut with their staff numbers frozen, even though their partyroom has grown from nine to 16. 

With nearly 30 staffers headed by a slew of doctors, lawyers and CEOs, the teals could create whole flying squads to investigate every policy proposal Labor makes, propose concrete alternatives, and bust open the predators’ banquet that Labor-friendly lobbyists are licking their lips over. The Libs can’t say anything for a while without the riposte “You had nine years to do it”, but the teals are cleanskins and can come at Labor from every angle.

The cut in staff is clearly designed to stop all that in its tracks. 

This would have been a perfect opportunity for the teals to make a show of unity, with or without the Greens. Labor is betting, in part, on the fact that a teals-led stoush on parliamentary matters will look like a bit of a tantrum and inwardly focused. It will to some, but the teals have an educated electorate that follows the news — Monique Ryan’s crew would occupy Victoria’s Government House if that’s what it took to get the ABC radio 7.45am news bulletin back — and they will recognise a shifty Labor move.

To date, however, it has come out as individual independent objections, and that isn’t nearly as effective as a collective show of force (though it may be, behind the scenes). It still gives the appearance of petitioning a monolithic power, rather than contesting it from strength and positioning one’s group as the de facto opposition.

It lends legitimacy to Labor’s stern-but-fair pose. Yet an issue like this, on democratic procedure, is tailor made for a broad front because it requires no one to surrender or compromise. It should be a unified teal-plus-Pocock opposition to such a measure, then a looser joint restatement with the Greens, and then a yet looser one with Lambie and Tammy Tyrrell, then that young man in a fancy collar and pocket kerchief who’s going to be in the UAP for the next six months, and maybe skip One Nation. 

Perhaps there’s a plan in place and they’re working as a team while still appearing publicly as individuals. That still strikes me as a mistake if it’s the case, especially on an issue like this. Now is the time, with the right in disarray, to manifest the unity of progressivism as much as possible.

There may be some fear that this will eventually call out a more unified right. But that sort of response will emerge anyway, if it can emerge at all, in response to the general atmosphere of the era (or a working-class populism with different priorities to progressivism will emerge, which would be welcome). 

Yeah, it’s a tough one to do. With Albanese, Tanya Plibersek and Penny Wong now touring the world and restoring Australia’s reputation as a place that is part of the international dialogue, many progressive people would not want to see that interrupted or mozzed. And four may well be a little too many (MPs have other electoral staffers as well). But the old allocation of a single staffer is too little, a relic of an earlier age, when independents were an anomaly, when social media did not exist, and when they did not hold such crucial positions in the Senate. 

The Greens and independents can force a floor vote on this matter in the Senate, but of course they would have to have the opposition on side. They’d get them, but do they want them? What sort of look is it to be out of the gate dragging the detritus of an earlier era back into the game?

But even that is not without its advantage. The teals would show the blue-rinse, true-blue Liberal diehards in their electorates that they’re not simply Labor stooges. Might actually be good for votes.

In any case, it’s a matter about functioning democracy, an issue prior to issues, so it must be fought. How the independents do it will determine whether it looks like a try for a win, or merely a whinge.