Can the job of being a federal member of parliament be shared by two or more persons? Two prospective candidates for the inner-Melbourne federal seat of Higgins, Lucy Bradlow and Bronwen Bock, have announced that they will run as job-sharing independent candidates. They say they will “work week-on, week off, with a handover at the end of each week”. Is this legally and constitutionally valid?
Bradlow and Bock claim “there are no legal barriers to the inclusion of two candidates in either the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act or the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918”. They argue the Constitution permits parliament to change the number of members of parliament, and does not specify a particular number of members per seat.
They conclude that “the only possible barrier to two people running to represent the same electorate is that previous candidate nomination forms for the House of Representatives […] only allowed space for the entry of the name of one candidate” and the form should be “updated” to allow two or more names to be entered as “the candidate”.
In 2015 in the United Kingdom, two Green party candidates sought to job-share. They took legal proceedings against the electoral officer who rejected their nomination. They argued references in statutes to a “candidate” and “member” in the singular should be interpreted as including the plural, and the law had to be interpreted in a manner consistent with the European Convention of Human Rights.
The High Court of England and Wales rejected their argument. Justice Wilkie pointed out that job-sharing by members of parliament would give rise to many difficult practical and conceptual problems, and these were not something a court was equipped to deal with or should determine through statutory interpretation. It was a matter for parliament to resolve, not the courts.
The same point should be made here in Australia. If job-sharing for members of parliament is desired, then at the very least this should be the subject of proper consideration and legislation by parliament to make the system workable.
[Ed: If there is a will, there is a way]
Source: Two people want to share the job of MP for Higgins. Is it constitutional?
Afraid I disagree with this proposal entirely. If it were to go ahead (despite its unconstitutionality), what price the concerns about MPs who fill the office and continue with another job? MPs who continue to work a fulltime job whilst holding office as a constituency/electorate’s representative are (in my view) rightly criticised for this. How would it be any different? Saying I am in a jobshare doesn’t address the problem at all – the MP continues to consider that being an MP is part time post. Saying I have a mate working when I am not does not resolve this. Sorry, but a person who goes to the electorate has a responsibility to focus on that job, not sharing time between the job of MP and some other career. This is completely different from other jobshares – for example administrative work.