Usually they wouldn’t be seen dead together. But Pauline Hanson, Fatima Payman and Dai Le joined forces on Thursday to condemn Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for discriminating against them in staffing allocations.

The prime minister decides how many personal staff parliamentarians receive, and he has been arbitrary in his decisions.

Senator Payman, an independent who defected from the Labor Party last term to the crossbench over the issue of Palestine, has complained constantly about being discriminated against. Leaving aside electorate staff, she has no personal staff allocated to her compared, for example, with the two each that fellow independents David Pocock and Lidia Thorpe (who defected from the Greens) have.

One Nation doubled its Senate representation from two to four at the 2025 election but received no extra staff.

After its win in the........

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