Payman says Albanese offered her additional staff for her vote

Independent senator Fatima Payman claims Prime Minister Anthony Albanese offered her additional staff in exchange for her vote during contentious Senate negotiations in the last term of parliament.

According to Payman, Albanese offered the former Labor senator an additional staff member on the condition she voted with the government to cut off debate in the Senate during the final parliamentary sitting day of 2024. The prime minister’s office has refused to comment.

Payman says she was invited into the prime minister’s office on November 28, 2024, to discuss the legislative package, but she rejected Albanese’s offer because she did not want to rubber-stamp Labor’s migration reforms. Payman claims a second offer was made from one of Albanese’s staff to one of hers, which was also rejected.

The prime minister’s office did not respond to questions about the specifics of the meeting, the alleged offers, or whether Albanese had made staffing offers for votes at any other time.

“We don’t comment on private meetings. The PM’s office regularly engages and meets with independent members of the crossbench. The PM also meets with and talks to MPs from across the parliament,” a government spokesperson said.

The claim comes a week after this masthead revealed One Nation MP David Farley rejected an unsolicited offer from Albanese for an additional staffer, with the party labelling the move an attempt to use taxpayer money to win favour with the new MP.

Payman has maintained her increasingly bitter campaign for extra staffing with Albanese since her defection from Labor in 2023, to no avail.

All parliamentarians can hire up to five staffers on lower “electorate officer” wages, up from the four every MP was allowed under the Morrison government. However, the provision of higher paid “adviser” level staff remains at the prime minister’s sole discretion.

Federal politicians have a base salary of $239,270, set by the remuneration tribunal. Electorate officers receive a salary up to $102,681, while adviser level staff can earn up to $317,152. Typically, crossbench and opposition staffers earn up to $160,043.

Payman claims the prime minister is punishing her by not affording equal staffing levels to her crossbench colleagues.

Every senator who has defected from their party to sit on the Senate crossbench has been granted additional staff by Albanese. That cohort includes former Jacqui Lambie Network senator Tammy Tyrrell (now a Labor senator), former Greens senator Lidia Thorpe and former Liberal senator David Van (now retired). Payman is the only federal independent without additional staff.

Albanese has defended his actions, saying Payman’s staffing is in line with her entitlements when she was elected as a Labor senator.

Of the rejected offers, Payman said: “We met with the PM, and he said in that meeting that in return for support of the guillotine motion of a number of bills, he told me that he would give me staff very easily.”

Payman said she and Albanese discussed the contents of the bills being debated in the Senate that day but, as the daughter of a refugee, felt she could not support proposed changes to the migration act.

“I told the PM that I’m not going to support it unless he gets rid of the migration bills so that we can actually debate them and not just rush them into this guillotine motion. And yeah, he wasn’t happy,” Payman said.

The migration amendments allowed the government to pay for unwanted foreigners, typically with criminal convictions, to be sent to third countries, including countries not party to the United Nation’s Refugee Convention. The relevant immigration minister was also empowered to strip people of their refugee status.

Albanese and Payman were joined in the meeting by one staff member each. Following the meeting, Payman says Albanese’s staff member called hers to offer an additional adviser if she abstained from the tight vote. She rejected the offer.

A guillotine motion limits the length of debate on a bill, or in this case, a series of bills, to ensure legislation can be passed quickly or before a chamber rises. The November 28 vote sought to expedite a raft of legislation, including bills on migration, crime, family law, and superannuation concessions.

The same day, Albanese met then-Greens leader Adam Bandt to secure support for the guillotine alongside votes for alterations to the Reserve Bank and the Future Made in Australia program. The Coalition supported Labor’s under-16 social media ban and migration reforms.

Crossbenchers and integrity experts have been pressing Albanese to hand his staffing powers to an independent body such as the Remuneration Tribunal, following increased scrutiny on the way he grants extra hires. In September, this masthead revealed that Tyrrell was allowed to retain her additional staff when she joined Labor in May.

Labor also tried unsuccessfully to get then-opposition leader Sussan Ley to back freedom of information changes in exchange for additional staff, and allowed the Greens to keep 15 advisers after a leadership change, just days before the party voted against an inquiry into Albanese’s power to allocate staff.