COMMITTEES

Senator PAYMAN (Western Australia—Australia's Voice Whip) (11:28): I rise to express my support for the staffing bill that One Nation have put forward. I think it is outrageous—we are calling on the Prime Minister to stop playing his petty games and to treat us all with the same respect and dignity that we deserve. We were elected by the Australian people.

You can hate our politics, you can hate what we do, and you can be annoyed by the fact that I put through so many OPDs and annoy the hell out of your ministers. But I'm holding you to account. You came into government in 2022 talking about transparency, promising the Australian people that you'd be transparent with them, that you'd be upfront and honest.

And here we are, as mostly women parliamentarians, asking you—and at times it feels like we're begging you—to get off your high horse and to stop using your discretionary powers to exploit the system. The additional staff that crossbench senators get is at the discretion of the Prime Minister. For the Australian people who actually don't know about this, the Prime Minister gets to choose how many staff members we get to have.

For a parliamentarian, that's one of the most important resources, because we can then service our states and our constituents appropriately. By depriving us of that, he is doing a disservice to the entire state, because of his petty politics. A lot of people I've spoken to—everyday Australians—ask: 'How is that even allowed?

How does the Prime Minister have that kind of power to punish the women he disagrees with?' We've heard his comments around melons, about what he thinks about Grace Tame being difficult and about what he thinks he would do to Kylie Minogue. We know how he would treat women, and that's why you have all these female parliamentarians, both in the Senate and in the House of Reps, being starved of the resources that the major parties get to enjoy for themselves—or at least the government have reserved for themselves.

I'm a new mum with a four-and-a-half-month-old and I'm trying to service the biggest state in this country. The people of Western Australia deserve better. The Prime Minister, who claims to be supporting Western Aussies, is actually depriving its only independent senator from doing her job.

You're also putting the wellbeing and welfare of my staff at the frontline at risk. My office has just five full-timers, and they're expected to do similar levels of work as other offices who have seven staffers. How is that fair?

You talk a big game, Labor, about 'same job, same pay'. My chief of staff does the same job as the chief of staff of, say, Senator Thorpe or Senator Pocock, and yet she gets paid less. But she has to do a lot more work.

They come in early. They leave late. Why?

Because the Prime Minister is so bloody petty. Shame on you! Shame on you for doing this to Western Australians.

How dare you claim to stand for women's rights and their welfare and to boast about your female majority caucus when you are stopping women in this place from actually doing their job right. You've got a fat mandate from the Australian people by winning the 2025 election: do bloody better. I hope you're listening, Prime Minister, because I've had it.

We've written to your office. We've written to the Special Minister of State, Don Farrell, and we've even FOI'd to see where these documents are going. We follow the bloody processes, and we don't get anything back.

You don't even acknowledge that we've sent you these emails and letters. I can't believe we're still having this conversation. If you are annoyed by the fact that I crossed the floor on a matter of principle, well, you know what, 15 months later you did that same thing.

You recognised the State of Palestine, so grow up and just adult, okay? Stop being so petty.