Crossbenchers duck Crikey’s extremely important questions about their ‘collusion’

Correspondence “inadvertently sent to all parliamentary staff has revealed collusion on policy and strategy among members of the crossbench”, reports The Australian, in a piece that details a conspiracy from Australia’s independents and minor parties to… regularly meet to discuss politics and parliamentary procedure.

The correspondence reveals the MPs would meet to discuss “government business: approach to/amendments to government bills this week”, “private member’s business: motions, private member’s bills, selection committee” and “campaigns, areas of interest, events to share”.

According to an “insider”, this conspiracy is so cunning it’s not even secret:

One insider told The Australian it was ‘no secret’ that the crossbench communicated regularly and worked together when required. 

“Teal MP Kate Chaney also raised that she wanted to ‘check with David Pocock on changing this meeting to reduce it to one meeting, not two'”, runs a particularly chilling detail.

Senator for sedition the ACT David Pocock, when approached by Crikey, just came out and admitted it.

“Do I occasionally swap notes or seek to work collegiately with my parliamentary colleagues to magnify the impact of our efforts in the mutual interest of the people we represent? Of course I do,” Pocock told Crikey.

Fellow conspirator Zali Steggall was similarly contrite: “If you mean by working collaboratively together to prioritise efficiencies, then ‘guilty’ as charged!”

It only got worse from there.

As Pocock continued, “My other confessions include participating in games of cross parliamentary touch rugby, soccer and Aussie rules in sitting weeks, chatting to people from all sides of politics at the cafe and in the gym as well as co-chairing ‘Parliamentary Friends of’ groups (Housing, Clean Investment, Conservation, Tech Policy and the Capital Region) with members of the government, Coalition and crossbench.”

He also added some nonsense about the relative resources available to independent MPs as opposed to the major parties.

“The government collectively employs some 489 personal staff and benefits from the combined efforts and expertise of more than 161,000 dedicated Australian public servants,” he said. “On the crossbench, by contrast, we must make do with just one or two personal staff each to get across and consult with our communities on more than the 126 pieces of legislation currently before the Parliament.”

Pocock was at least upfront. We approached several other conspirators revealed by the Oz with the following questions:

1. Are you indeed guilty of “collusion” as The Australian defines it (meeting with other politicians to discuss policy and parliamentary procedure)?
   
2. While you’re unburdening yourself, do you wish to confess to any other subversion of democracy like organising a meeting that probably could have been an email or making lots of annoying requests around what varieties of tea be made available to attendees?

Representatives for Zoe Daniel, Helen Haines and Andrew Wilkie refused to answer (either didn’t respond in time or said no comment).

The impact of this reporting is obvious in some of the outraged comments from Oz readers. Comments such as “I don’t see a problem”, “Makes sense to me” and “The problem I see is the crossbench are all politically to the left”.