Here’s an unpopular view about politicians: we need to give them post-politics jobs

In 2015, former South Australian premier Jay Weatherill defended a pay rise that had just been awarded to state MPs by the state’s remuneration tribunal.

It was a reasonable raise, he told journalists. And besides, “if the public had their way, they wouldn’t pay us”.

Weatherill was a clear-eyed realist about Australians’ trust in politicians, and their oft-cynical appraisal of politicians’ worth.

Undeterred, Weatherill also raised the idea that MPs’ superannuation should be increased, reminding voters that when members of parliament are “flung out” of office, they are “middle-aged with very few job prospects”.

Harsh, but true. No wonder they pop up so often on government boards.

This week the Albanese government finally, and apparently reluctantly, released the Lynelle Briggs report into appointments to government boards, and the processes (or lack of process) governing them. The report was commissioned by Labor and conducted by Briggs, a former Australian Public Service commissioner. She finished it over two years ago, in August 2023.

Dramatically entitled NO FAVOURITES (capitals, Briggs’ own), the report found that between 6 and 7 per cent of government board appointments could be described as “political”. Up to 50 per cent of jobs are direct ministerial appointments that lead to perceptions of politicisation and undermine public trust.

When Labor was in opposition, it was, rightly, highly critical of the egregious number of political appointments the Morrison government made, in particular to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. So much so that Labor abolished the AAT when it won power, replacing it in 2024 with the Administrative Review Tribunal.

Now Labor’s position has moderated – it sat on the Briggs report for two years and released it this week only after intense lobbying from independent ACT Senator David Pocock, among others.

The minister with carriage of the issue, Katy Gallagher, announced a non-legislated “framework” of principles to regulate government appointments. But she has declined to institute one of the report’s key recommendations – banning ministerial appointments in the six months before an election.

Transparency advocates have been critical of Labor’s response.

“Australia has been handed a diluted response to a robust, independent review,” wrote Professor Gabrielle Appleby and Dr Catherine Williams of the Centre for Public Integrity in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age this week.

“[The government] has left the door open for the very behaviours the Briggs Review seeks to stop.”

But the report does raise an unexpected question: what should we do with our former politicians? Must they be forever cast adrift, democracy’s spare parts? Or can they make good use of the knowledge and experience they have gained while working for voters, and channel it into further public service?

The chief problem for ex-MPs is precisely the one Weatherill nodded to – whatever the individual merits of a politician, as a class of people, they are disliked and distrusted. This, naturally, affects their hireability.

When MPs and senators leave federal parliament, they do get a severance package, although it applies only to those who have been voted out of office or who have lost the support of their parties. Euphemistically called a “resettlement allowance”, it amounts to a bit over $100,000, equal to six months’ worth of a backbencher’s salary. That’s a lot of money to most people, but regular MPs are not most people – they’re actually less employable.

“After leaving parliament, most MPs don’t do very well,” says Amy Nethery, senior lecturer in politics and policy at Deakin University, who co-authored a 2021 piece of research called The Transitioning to Life after Parliament Study.

“Unemployment is very high. There is financial distress, family breakdown, and psychological stuff, like a loss of identity. You’re used to being the most important person in the room and then nobody calls you any more.”

Nethery’s study (which she co-authored with colleagues at Deakin University) was commissioned by the Victorian state parliament, and it concerned only former Victorian parliamentarians, mostly backbenchers who had served an average of two terms (eight years).

No similar work has yet been published for their federal counterparts, but Nethery says in the years since her research, there has been a heightened international interest in the “global problem” of what to do with our jobless ex-pollies.

Apart from surveying the former MPs themselves, the Deakin University researchers also spoke to seven recruitment agencies.

“Their knowledge of what an MP does was really atrocious,” Nethery tells me.

“It is a very generalised job requiring many skills. In your electorate, you’re a social worker, then there is the party room and politicking. You might be part of a committee doing an inquiry, or you might be making submissions to one. You are getting across complex data.”

But recruiters and potential employers carry the same anti-politician bias as the rest of the population.

“If you have stuck your head above the parapet and said, ‘I want to be involved in politics’, many potential employers will be turned off,” Nethery says.

Still, few Australians are currently unpacking their tiny violins as they read this.

Perhaps that’s because of the high-profile examples of former prime ministers and cabinet ministers who have done very well for themselves indeed.

Scott Morrison endured terrible press after he left politics, and it was revealed that he had secretly assigned himself extra ministerial portfolios during the pandemic, unbeknown to the ministers whose portfolios he acquired, and unbeknown to the Australian public he was serving. The former member for Cook also received a post-politics lashing from the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme– among other things, he was found to have given false evidence to the royal commission.

Morrison said he rejected completely “each of the findings which are critical of my involvement in authorising the scheme and are adverse to me”.

None of it precluded him from getting a job with the US consulting/lobbying firm American Global Strategies, which has strong links to the Trump administration.

Kevin Rudd, of course, has been appointed ambassador to the US (with famously less affectionate relations with the Trump administration)and Julia Gillard has held a number of roles, including chair of Beyond Blue, visiting professor at King’s College London, and fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Tony Abbott has just published a book on Australian history and he been appointed to the board of Fox Corporation in the US, among other board positions. Malcolm Turnbull has independent business interests to which he returned to post-politics, plus a global speaking career. Julie Bishop has landed on her feet as the chancellor of the Australian National University (which has lately been racked by controversy) and Bill Shorten is across town at the University of Canberra, where he serves as vice chancellor.

Some move in a direct line from their ministerial portfolio to a lobbying firm that represents the same industries they once regulated.

Since 2008, there has been a rule that former ministers and MPs must wait 18 months after leaving their jobs before signing on as a lobbyist, but it is not legislated and it lacks enforcement.

Martin Ferguson was a Labor government resources and energy minister, and within months of retiring from politics, he joined the advisory board of lobby group Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association. Christopher Pyne, a former Liberal defence minister, now has his own lobbying firm which focuses on defence clients.

But these gainfully employed ex-politicians are the lucky ones.

An awkward truth seldom acknowledged is that some former politicians are eligible for the lucrative parliamentary pension scheme, which John Howard abolished in 2004 (it can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year depending on time served and positions held). Abbott is one of those and Albanese will be too, once he retires. Others, like Morrison, get the six-month “resettlement package”, then they’re knocking on doors, with mortgages and school fees to pay like any other (admittedly upper middle-class) Australian.

Perin Davey, a former NSW Nationals senator and a former deputy leader of the Nationals, currently has an “Open to work” tag on her LinkedIn profile. As for Weatherill, in 2020 he landed a job leading the Minderoo Foundation’s early childhood development project, Thrive by Five. This year, Arts Minister Tony Burke appointed him to the council of the National Gallery of Australia and in 2026 he will start his new gig as ambassador to the United Kingdom. He takes over from the previous Labor appointee, Stephen Smith, a former defence minister and foreign minister.

Speaking before he leaves for London in the new year, Weatherill says the argument for politicians to be properly remunerated, particularly post-politics, is simple.

“They shouldn’t be worried about their next job, in their current job,” he says.

“It becomes an integrity measure.”

Another alternative, Weatherill says, is “they go into the private sector and take a lobbying job”.

“Is that better or worse? Arguably, it introduces more risk.”

None of which is an argument against robust scrutiny of government appointments, to make sure they are made according to merit, but also to ensure public trust in institutions.

Most former politicians who take government jobs “don’t want to go in under a cloud”, says Weatherill.

“They would welcome the scrutiny of the appointment; they are completely confident they are an appropriate choice.”

Weatherill is right. Admitting it goes against every properly anti-authority, and rightly cynical instinct Australians hold. But competent former politicians do have unique skills. We may as well harvest them for the public good.

Jacqueline Maley is a senior writer and columnist.

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