Jenna Price | Don't blame Monique Ryan or Sally Rugg. Blame the system under Anthony Albanese

Remember the excitement about the teals? Even if you were a rusted-on Labor supporter, the realisation that these were the only people who could untie the blue from blue-ribbon was thrilling.

There was a collective groan this week at news Sally Rugg, of the marriage equality campaign and so much more, is suing Victorian teal Monique Ryan over hostile conduct. As reported earlier, Rugg "has launched a legal challenge for unfair dismissal against [Ryan] over claims she was sacked for refusing to work unreasonable hours".

Now aside from wondering at the sense of hiring an actual political star to be your chief-of-staff (a role where there is no stardom except for helping your boss to shine) or the sense of working for a former healthcare professional, forged in an industry which has never had boundaries or any sense of downtime, there are serious issues around political staffing.

The Rugg-Ryan fiasco (in which both players are keeping sensibly schtum) appears a battle between what we want (work-life balance which will encourage actual people with children to participate and when I say people I mean women) and what we have (oppressive working conditions for anyone who works for a parliamentarian, and the parliamentarians themselves don't far any better)..

So feel gleeful all you like at the hoo-ha, are there any parliamentarians in federal politics who think they have enough staff?

Short answer no. And crossbenchers are hardest hit because they have to be across everything. They don't have the infrastructure of a political party to help them. They can't just get the CliffNotes from the relevant minister.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is doing a million times better than his predecessor. Another plus, we don't cringe when he opens his mouth. Albo is not, as my former boss Jack Waterford put it late last year, "full of PR and marketing bullshit".

But he still makes intensely irritating decisions. Remember when the Prime Minister decided to remove staffers from the offices of crossbenchers? I mean, not personally remove them but cut the funding for their very existence?

There were two responses to that. 1. Good, let's cut wasteful spending 2. Bad, Albo is trying to undermine independent voices.

And, of course, why not make it hard for teals to teal. Why encourage that kind of independent behaviour? Give voters just two choices and they will then be forced to choose between red and blue.

But what if removing staffers was bad for our nation?

As the Australian Institute's director of the Democracy and Accountability Program Bill Browne puts it: "Democracy needs to be staffed."

"If we want to have the best laws and the best government we need politicians and staff who are well-rested, cared for and connected to their families."

Right now, they are not.

Here is better news. Looks like Albo has revived his sense of fairness. There are now whispers that the next budget will provide every parliamentarian (red, blue, brindle) an extra person in their electorate offices. Yes, that is definitely good news but still a way to go.

Federal parliamentarians are now representing about 110,000 voters each. In Ryan's Kooyong, there are now 113,344 voters (plus a bunch of others whose interests need to be minded, including children) compared to 88,324 in 2007.

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That's an increase of just over 20 per cent in just 16 years. And never mind the increase in population, you know what else started to really take hold in Australia over that period of time? Bloody social media.

So anyone who works for a parliamentarian now has to deal with being on all the time. The calls. The socials. The letters. The emails. Being a good parliamentarian means supporting the people who put you there in the first place.

That's only half the job. The other half is representing the interests of those in the electorate, as part of the parliamentary process. It's doing the job of enacting the will of the people who took you to parliament in the first place.

So how could we make this allocation of staffing fairer?

Well, for one thing, take it out of the hands of Albo. How on Earth is it reasonable to put all the power in the hands of the PM?

I asked political scientist Maria Maley of ANU what she thought about this debacle.

Maley's life's work has been studying the ways and means of staffers. The working conditions are awful and they operate under the MOPS Act, which was reviewed last year. It looked at recruitment, fairness, responsibilities, expectations and accountability.

And after a great deal of faffing about, it did not recommend removing the allocation powers from the Prime Minister.

As Maley puts it, there is never any reason given for any decisions: "There is never any explanation/justification given for allocation."

The recommendation? The new Office of Parliamentary Staffing and Culture "should undertake a review of the factors affecting workloads, particularly in electorate offices, including support systems and processes, and external factors such as the adequacy of government services and electorate composition, to inform an evidence-based consideration of office and staffing resources.

"The review should recommend principles to be considered by the Prime Minister in determining staffing allocations."

Talk about squibbing it.

Maley disagrees that the PM should make the decision. She suggests the remuneration tribunal or the House of Representatives standing committee on appropriations and administration or the Senate standing committee on appropriations, staffing and security.

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Anything is better than a decision in the hands of one person, no matter how lacking in bullshit that person is. It would also prevent the kind of perk-barrelling Morrison wheeled out to keep favour with crossbenchers. Albo said he was returning to normal but he cut back too far.

Over the years, I've spoken to many staffers. To my eternal shame, I've called them at 6am and at 11pm because that's how news cycles work. Staffers' hours are ludicrous. Their bosses' hours are ludicrous. This week (and remember we are just at the beginning of the year), one staffer described it as already "drowning in work". And no-one can do a good job if permanently buggered.

Maybe we need more electorates. But what we need urgently and right now is more hands on deck to deliver our democracy.

As Maley says: "If staffing resources are inadequate this makes life impossible for the MP as well as their staff members."

Don't blame Ryan or Rugg. Blame the system which is currently run by the Prime Minister.