One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson slammed the Albanese government on X this afternoon over a long-running dispute about staff cuts.

Albanese cut One Nation’s staffing last year, along with cuts to the Liberals, Greens, and a small reduction in Labor positions. While the reduction in Liberal advisors could be explained by losses in their seats, One Nation doubled its size and had its staffing effectively sliced in half.

Regardless, there were complaints about the decision from many corners of politics.

With the sudden surge in One Nation support, these cuts have, according to Senator Hanson, left the party struggling to keep up with requests coming into the office.

The Senator said:

I want to apologise to people who have tried to get in touch with my office and haven’t received a response. We are being inundated with thousands of calls, emails and messages every week and it’s not possible to respond to all of them.

The Albanese government cut the staff allocation to One Nation after the last election. I have been going to both the Prime Minister and Special Minister of State Don Farrell since the staff cuts. I have been begging and pleading with them to give us more staff to deal with the heavy workload.

In fact, earlier this year a staff member wrote to the Prime Minister directly, explaining the extreme stress they are under. Labor hasn’t even responded and couldn’t care less.

My staff have continued out of loyalty, and they want to help the Australian people but their health has now become a serious issue.

As the leader of One Nation, I have five Electorate officers and just two Parliamentary Advisers.

The Leader of the Greens, Larissa Waters, has five electorate officers and 15 Advisers.

The Prime Minister has 59 personal Advisers. Adding his other Ministers, the Government employs a total of 504 personal Advisers. This is in addition to the 1,200+ employees in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet alone and 185,000 employed by the government as bureaucrats in the public service.

This is the Prime Minister using his powers to disadvantage his political opponents who don’t agree with his agenda.

My office deals with people in very difficult situations, complicated family law, immigration, NDIS, veterans and welfare plus many other matters. The Australian people’s personal struggles are worse than ever – my staff have had to talk people down from the edge of taking their own lives. Many people come to us because they get absolutely no assistance from the government and many other political offices. It’s beyond a joke the lack of help that Labor is providing considering I would have one of the busiest political offices in the country.

I didn’t want to air this out in public, but this Albanese government has given me no choice.

It’s not that we don’t want to do the work for the Australian people, it’s that we physically can’t. My staff want to help this country and the people in it, but they’re so stressed they are close to collapsing. I am the leader of a political party that is polling more than major political parties. The government has failed to staff One Nation anywhere close to a functional level. This is pure, bloody-minded politics by the Labor Party. I’ve tried everything I can to help people and will continue to do so, but my hands are tied. The Labor party like to go on about the battlers. Well, I’ve got some in my office trying to do a decent job for many Australians, but they don’t care about them.

This is the Senator’s opinion, which she has voiced many times since the original staff reductions took place.

When rules are left up to the discretion of political opponents, there are always going to be questions about fairness.

In this case, the view of Labor’s opposition – be they Greens, Liberals, or One Nation – is that staffing matter should be looked at again and allowances made for demonstrable increases in workload.

This is especially true if the government wishes to keep pushing through large amounts of incredibly serious legislation that changes many fundamental and long-held norms without significant public discussion.