Are MPs local members or backbenchers first?

Members of Parliament suffer from a "brand" problem. There is a lack of trust in democracy and in political parties, combined with widespread ignorance about the parliamentary system and how individual MPs fit within it. The few who are relatively well known are the party leaders, who continually spar with one another, and the ministers in key portfolios like Treasury and Health who make public announcements. The rest make up the numbers. They are reduced via television coverage to being colour and noise in Parliament, or nodding heads and fixed smiles in the background as party leaders tour the country making announcements. In the popular mind, they all, bar a few, seem to be either mad, bad or deluded. Parliament House in Canberra reportedly has a toxic culture in which women are unsafe. Empathy training, widely derided as unnecessary for normal people, is apparently the prescribed cure. The current poster boy is the troubled Queensland MP Dr Andrew Laming, who is retiring at the next election. In the NSW Parliament the slim majority held by the Berejiklian government has been eroded this year with three MPs moving to the crossbenches due to alleged sex crimes or corruption. What awful images of the average MP. This image problem, however, is not necessarily faced by individual MPs in their own electorates. For many years surveys have shown that local MPs are more highly regarded than MPs in general, and not just by that section of the community which votes for them. Recently I attended a U3A talk on the life and work of a new MP given by Alicia Payne, the Labor Member for Canberra, who entered Parliament at the 2019 election. She took us out of the negative world of unseemly partisan squabbles into an informative tour of her world in and out of Parliament House. It is the type of talk that all MPs should give when they can, because audiences, regardless of political allegiance, are receptive to conversation which rises above inevitable party politics. She described her various efforts to reach out to her constituency and to allow them to reach her. Many of these approaches are well known, including shopping centre visits, coffee invitations, meetings at her office, public events and speeches and the usual social media outlets. Most of these are conducted when Parliament is not sitting, because parliamentary chamber demands, including committees, are all-encompassing and do not leave much time for electorate work. She also hinted at the most common requests for assistance her office receives. They include help with the NDIS, the NBN, Centrelink, taxation and immigration matters. MPs are one avenue for such assistance when confronted with the often frightening interface with government agencies. She would speak for most MPs. Just a few days later I received in the mail a community survey from Ms Payne, my own local member, which got me thinking. It, too, was not intrusively partisan - and therefore tempting, though weeks later I have still not completed it. I suspect my tardiness is the rule and not the exception, which speaks to the difficulties MPs face in reaching out to the community. The survey asked three things, as well as my personal information. The first two are: "Which one issue and why [out of 18 options plus 'other'] is of most concern to you?" and "What other issues are you most concerned about (choose up to four)?" Ms Payne offers to raise these issues in Parliament. Such questions enable the local member to determine in an unscientific, but still valuable, way, the priorities between issues within her electorate. The third question asks: "Which political party do you normally support?" Combined with the personal data requested this seems an intrusive question, and depends upon the existence of considerable trust between local member and constituent. It also raises the inevitability of party politics, given that many of the voters of the electorate of Canberra are not Labor supporters. Our system works best if constituents trust the local member to do their best for them regardless of party affiliation. READ MORE: Local MPs usually build a database of constituents for campaigning and service purposes. In terms of their self-interest, perhaps it is better for a constituent to be identified as "undecided" or "independent" rather than being locked into one or the other of the major parties. Thinking about the survey encouraged me to recognise the mixed roles of local MPs. They are local members, representing the community, but they are also party members and "nodding backbenchers". Ms Payne addressed this in her letter accompanying the survey, when she referred to the need for the community's voice to be heard by both our national decision-makers and the federal Labor team. Local members can do both, in the chamber and in the party room. The danger in the chamber is that the deliberations of Parliament are so partisan that the government will not listen to any opposition voices and vice versa. Even Liberal backbenchers are unlikely to be heard by the Coalition inner circle if they buck the party line. The danger in the party room is that the concerns of the electorate of Canberra, a safe Labor seat, will be discounted by an opposition party framing its policies in the context of trying to win the next election in marginal seats elsewhere. Local concerns may be crunched out by the party professionals doing the numbers. My own approach is always to support an enthusiastic local member, but never to forget that both of us are caught up in the cruel larger world of modern party democracy.