Kate Jones: Parliamentarians ’ Staff and the Professionalisation of Australian Politics

Political parties and support staff are elements of the infrastructure of parliamentary life for members of parliament in Australia today. Both have developed since Federation, but the development of the political party system has been the subject of more research than the development of parliamentary staffing. This paper will trace the development of Commonwealth parliamentarians ’ entitlement to staff with particular emphasis on the period from 1975 onwards, and its relationship to changes in the role of parliamentarians. It will argue that the change from a time when parliamentarians had no staff to an era of staff supplied by the government was driven both by the increasing professionalisation of the work of members of parliament and by economic and social change in Australia. In 1901 parliamentarians were seen as amateurs serving the nation from a sense of duty and explicitly eschewing the idea of politics as a job or profession. This view was clear in the arrangements for their payment made in the Constitution. They were given not a ‘salary ’ but an ‘allowance ’ that would enable them to live while carrying out their parliamentary duties. This view of parliamentarians predominated until after World War 2. From the 1950s until the early 1970s backbenchers were entitled to one staff member, whose role was seen as entirel