I have to confess that one of the best ways to lose your readership is to bang on about restoring the size of Parliament to pre-1998 levels.
People are not interested in a Parliament absorbed with itself, while punters out there are struggling with the cost of living.
People don’t want a cent spent on this.
They’re furiously opposed to a bigger Parliament as much as they were in 1997 when they hounded politicians to make it smaller.
Why? Voters don’t trust politicians because they play stupid political games and renege on commitments. Voters view a restoration of the numbers as politicians serving themselves.
Having said all that, restoring the House of Assembly numbers from 25 to 35 is good policy for the sake of good government and proper representation for those same punters.
Trouble is, no one cares.
The history of this is fairly straightforward.
In 1993 the Groom Liberal Government legislated a 40 per cent pay rise for all MPs in return for a reduction in the numbers.
Tasmanians were furious. Politicians were voting themselves a big pay rise while expecting the greater workforce to argue their case before a tribunal.
The Legislative Council voted to take the pay rise but blocked the reduction in numbers.
For a State Government, also legislating to curb union power with industrial relations changes, this was a policy nightmare that cost the Liberals their landslide majority at the 1996 election.
In 1997 the minority Rundle Government, being propped up by the Greens, tried to reduce the numbers so that the Greens would still survive.
However, the Labor Opposition joined forces with the Legislative Council to reduce the House of Assembly numbers by 10 to 25 and from 19 to 15 in the Legislative Council.
Everybody applauded the reduction because it was supposed to save taxpayers money, but in reality it was aimed at getting rid of the Greens by increasing the percentage of the vote required to win a seat, from 12.5 per cent to 16.6 per cent.
The problem with this is it affords enormous power to the Premier because they owe their perks to him, but it greatly reduces his scope for promoting competent colleagues to Cabinet. Most of his team is inundated with work, or should be.
After the changes the press gallery did the research and found that instead of saving money the cost of Parliament actually surged each year.
The problem with a smaller Parliament is that voters have fewer politicians to represent them and the Premier has a greatly diminished gene pool of available MPs from which to form a Cabinet.
Worse still it produces greatly overworked ministers and hence greater power enjoyed by minders and bureaucrats.
In the current Cabinet six ministers have four or more portfolios.
Three have five or more.
Remember they are your typical Joe Average, making decisions worth hundreds of millions.
There are 10 MPs of Cabinet rank or equivalent, Sue Hickey holds the Speakership, former Minister Jacquie Petrusma gets a $28,000 allowance to be chairman of committees and Lyons MP John Tucker earns $8400 extra a year to be Government Whip.
This means 13 out of the 16 Liberal MPs in Parliament get extra loadings of various sizes, which at the top end are worth almost $100,000 a year for minsters as well as their base salary.
Almost everyone wins a prize.
The problem with this is it affords enormous power to the Premier because they owe their perks to him, but it greatly reduces his scope for promoting competent colleagues to Cabinet. Most of his team is inundated with work, or should be.
I also predict that an Industrial Commission inquiry will give the Premier greater scope to appoint taxpayer-funded parliamentary secretaries.
If this happens backbenchers will become a rare breed.
Okay, these are political science arguments, seemingly irrelevant in the current climate where survival is an essential pass time.
But think it through. A smaller Parliament forfeits considerable power to the government and reduces the representation of battlers.
Of course Cabinet is going to say this reform is way down their list of priorities because the smaller Parliament greatly enhances executive power.
Since 2014-15 the taxpayer contribution to the operations of the Cabinet has increased by 24 per cent to $18.5 million a year.
That’s almost $1.9 million per minister each year on top of their salaries.
So you have an overworked Cabinet, limited scope for replacing resignations and a Premier with far more power than he needs in order to govern.
I confess to being one of those journalists who badgered the Government in 1997 to cut the numbers, until I found out that cost-wise nothing had changed and costs were even going up and up.
Voters got their wish for fewer politicians and the major parties got their wish to reduce the power and influence of the Greens, while boosting the Government’s supremacy over Parliament.
They played us all for mugs.
The next time you see the Premier saying a bigger Parliament is a low priority in the current climate, you’ll know why.
- Barry Prismall is a former The Examiner deputy editor and Liberal adviser