An idea put forward by two childhood friends to be a job-sharing member of parliament “wouldn’t work without a constitutional amendment”, according to constitutional law expert Anne Twomey.
Bronwen Bock and Lucy Bradlow on the weekend launched their campaign to be Australia’s first political job-share independent candidates in the Melbourne seat of Higgins.
They say they would work one week on, one week off with a handover at the end of each week. There would be one email address and one vote in parliament, and wages and entitlements would be split.
But despite the wannabe MPs’ own research failing to find a legal or constitutional barrier to running as a joint candidate, Professor Twomey said there were many steps that would need to be overcome.
In a video shared on YouTube, she said the two women had a “lot of confusion going on between the constitution and laws”.
She said the constitution “couldn’t be much clearer than” only one member shall be elected for each electoral division.
“If you wanted to choose two job-sharing members, you would have to amend the Electoral Act,” she said.
“Not only in relation to section 57 (one member per division) but also in regards to the nomination form, the election writs, and numerous other provisions to make the Act workable in regards to job-sharing arrangement.”
She said if two people job shared as an MP, that would have run-on effects.
“You could not expand the number of members in Higgins to two without taking away from another Victorian electorate or having to redistribute every electorate,” she said.
Speaking to ABC News on Monday morning, Ms Bock and Ms Bradlow said job sharing had existed in the corporate environment for some time, and it was time for it to extend to politics.
“We’re seeing a lot more workplaces looking to rearrange roles to bring in a whole new crop of talent, and job sharing is a way of doing that,” Ms Bradlow said.
“I really believe that being a politician is a public service … And this is one way that we can do that.”
Ms Bock said she “despaired” every time a politician resigned for “family reasons”.
“Not because I don’t get it … but because I still want them there representing me. I want parliament to be representative of the people it represents.
“Without Lucy as a job share, I wouldn’t be willing to do it … We want to make parliament more inclusive and invite in a crop of people who currently aren’t able to join.”
They have the support of constitutional lawyer Kim Rubenstein, who has been lobbying Australian politicians to support parliamentarian job sharing.
“I think we have very strong legal foundations for this to be both constitutional and legally positive,” she said.
Liberal senator Simon Birmingham earlier said the idea “just doesn’t work”.
“I think if you think about how many of the smaller parties and others have operated over recent years, we often get in – the most recent example was Jacqui Lambie and Tammy Tyrrell, two members supposedly of the same party elected, but then they go their separate ways during the course of the parliament because they have legitimate disagreements in how they work together or the issues they stand for,” he said.
“It just doesn’t work to have a member of parliament split in two as two different individuals and then expect they’re going to be able to operate in consensus and deliver the type of consistency that’s required.”