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Often, when The Weekly runs political stories, readers tune out, and who can blame them? Politicians have a reputation for dodging questions or answering with spin calibrated to promote an agenda. Federal politics is tribal. Adversarial. When Liberal MP Julia Banks exited parliament, she gave us an explosive interview about the bullying and intimidation she faced in Canberra. Julie Bishop revealed that she had planned on staying on for the 2019 election but was done with the in-fighting.
Then, at the 2022 election, the Teal takeover showed voters wanted something different. Five independent women swept entrenched party members from their seats. Amid this upheaval, two women from the well-healed Melbourne seat of Higgins hatched a plan to further revolutionise parliament.
In April 2024, lawyer Lucy Bradlow and financial services expert Bronwen Bock announced their intention to run as Australia’s first job-sharing politicians.
In February 2025 the trailblazing candidates took it a step further. They filed an application in the Federal Court to prevent the Australian Electoral Commission from rejecting their nomination to run for a Senate seat after the seat of Higgins (which they were running for) was abolished.
Their goal? A parliament that looks more like the people it speaks for.
How did the job-sharing duo come up with the plan?
“Right now, parliament is not representative of the people it represents and that needs to change, and this is not the solution, but it is one solution. It’s an important solution,” Bronwen said shortly after they announced their candidacy.
The friends, who have known each other since they were teenagers, say opening elected positions up to job-sharing will allow more people to enter parliament. This could then result in more diverse opinions and experiences, and better policies. People who are carers, for example, will be able to directly shape policies relating to carers.
The Weekly first met Bronwen and Lucy in a Melbourne city café not long after they announced their plans. They were friendly, focused and on-message. “We’ve got a really clear model that we’re able to explain to people,” Bronwen said.
Lucy was working for the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) when she first hit upon the idea. “We were doing a lot of work around, ‘What does leadership look like? How do you change leadership to make it more inclusive?’” Lucy says.
WGEA, which was created to address gender equality in the workforce, had identified that there were not enough opportunities for part-time or flexible leadership roles.
Someone said to Lucy, “It’s funny nobody’s ever run [for election] as a job-sharing candidate.” She agreed, thinking, “We’re having an evolution in Australian politics towards more representative democracy and there was no one looking at actually how do you make Parliament more flexible?”
Is job-sharing in politics possible?
Lucy got in touch with Kim Rubenstein, a constitutional law professor at the University of Canberra, who has argued job-sharing in politics is good democracy. Kim told Lucy she believed two individuals could share one parliamentary seat. The issue goes to the heart of democracy, Kim says.
“What is representation but having people’s lived experiences in parliament?” She asks. “It’s not just having someone who lives a life you can’t live supposedly speaking on your behalf …You use power to enable others, not to have power over others.”
Lucy never wanted to serve as an MP until she considered doing it with someone else.
“I always thought Bron would make a great politician,” Lucy says of her long-time friend. “I’d always said to her when you’re ready I think I should run your political campaign.”
Bronwen is drawn to leadership positions, but as a mother of three, she could not commit to work as a full-time member of parliament.
“Because of my three small children I wouldn’t be willing to go to Canberra for 22 weeks a year,” she says. Bronwen worked at Macquarie Bank for a decade. After her first child was born, she moved to another company in a three-day role. She took on board roles and had two more children.
“I was constantly marrying the challenges of leadership and flex working,” she says. “I’ve seen hundreds of colleagues and friends come up against this push and pull, and not only when they’re having small children, but for all sorts of different reasons. Maybe they’re caring for ageing parents or maybe they have a disability and they’re not willing or able to work full time. Or live regionally.”
When Lucy approached Bronwen about running as a job-sharing candidate, Bronwen didn’t hesitate.
Old guard resistance
News of the Bradlow Bock parliamentary tilt was met with scepticism. Liberal MP Simon Birmingham told the ABC it wasn’t feasible, pointing to Tasmanian senators Jacqui Lambie and Tammy Tyrrell who parted ways mid-term after Tammy was originally elected as part of the Jacqui Lambi Network senate ticket.
“It just doesn’t work to have a Member of Parliament split in two and then expect they’re going to be able to operate in consensus,” he said at the time.
Michelle Ananda-Rajah, the former member for Higgins, said, “Putting aside the constitutional issue here — it is not clear to me what issue this project is trying to solve.” She pointed to the Albanese Government’s record on female representation. In his most recent cabinet reshuffle, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton matched the number of women on the Labor frontbench.
Queensland LNP senator James McGrath is adamant voters will not accept a “part-time politician.”
“I’m home probably one night a week on average. I’m out there listening to people. That’s what you do when you become a senator. You’ve got to work hard at the job,” he told 60 Minutes.
How would the job-sharing politicians split their work?
Lucy and Bronwen planned to run as community-backed independents, campaigning on climate change action, political inclusivity, and integrity in parliament. They will split their duties via a one-week-on one-week-off system with a hand-over in between. They’ll share one phone and one computer. Lucy notes that a side-effect of having a second person read all your correspondence is more accountability. The arrangement will be cost-neutral for tax-payers.
“So, there won’t be any instances where we’re both flying up to Canberra during a sitting week and doubling up on costs,” Bronwen says. They understand some people may feel working part-time means not giving 100 per cent to the role. “It’s not being done part-time,” says Bronwen. “It’s being done full-time but by two people.”
Job sharing is becoming more common in the corporate sector, Lucy says. And, she thinks that their critics’ failure to imagine how they would work through disagreements says more about the person than it does about their proposal.
“It says that person can’t work in a team, and they can’t work in an equal partnership, which is really disappointing that so many people, particularly members of parliament, think that it’s impossible to work in a partnership with someone,” Lucy says.
Kim agrees. “In a hospital, where you have patients, and you have shifts, there are lives at stake,” she says. “One nurse comes onto the next shift, takes up that documentation and continues on with the care of that person. I think it’s similar. It’s just about the handover and the communication of what you’ve done and what’s been covered.”
How would voters and colleagues react?
Federal parliament requires a lot of members. Senator McGrath, who is unmarried and childless, said voters expect 24/7 devotion.
After leaving parliament in 2013, MP Mal Washer, a GP, told political correspondent Katharine Murphy his Canberra office had been a de facto clinic. He would take blood pressure and temperature readings. He even wrote prescriptions for colleagues who didn’t have time to get to a doctor.
This expectation of almost religious abstinence from a life outside of work has historically cost Australians some of the politicians they have chosen to represent them.
In 2017, Labor front-bencher Kate Ellis left politics so as not to miss out on key moments in her son’s childhood. She told her voters she couldn’t bear the thought of spending “at least 20 weeks of every year” away from her young son and the rest of her family.
In 2018, first-term Perth MP Tim Hammond resigned, saying the demands of Canberra were taking too great a toll on his young family.
“My wife and I had tried everything under the sun to make this work in a way that I felt it wasn’t compromising my ability just to be the best dad that I could be,” the father of three said. He added he thought he would be able to manage his duties without impacting his family. “I got that wrong.”
It is mostly women who bow out of public life
A report by the Inter-Parliamentary Union found that globally, one in six female parliamentarians leaves before their term ends. Awareness is growing that the un-family-friendly hours of parliamentary work are harmful to democracy.
“You look at the nature of parliament and it is a specific kind of cohort that is cultivated in many ways, and the mentoring and so forth,” Kim says. “This reinforces not just who leads the country, but how they lead it.”
Job-sharing politicians could change government for the better
In 2013, the federal front bench looked like a reunion of Jesuit school old boys, with Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce, Joe Hockey, and Christopher Pine all having been educated by the same order of Jesuit Catholics. Labor was not exempt. Then party leader Bill Shorten had worn the red and black blazer of Melbourne’s Jesuit Xavier College.
“If you shake up that idea that it doesn’t have to be one person it can be two people you start to shake up these other ways that things have traditionally been done that may not be the best way of doing things,” Kim says.
“The day we launched we had two men say to us, ‘I would love to work part-time in a job-sharing role, but it’s so socially unacceptable. My employer would never allow me to do this’,” Lucy says. “Imagine if there was someone in parliament doing it. Imagine the message that would send.”
Parliament has undergone radical change before. Once upon a time, MPs did not receive a salary.
“Then, to make it less elitist, they brought in remuneration so people could participate that needed to have an income,” Bronwen says. “This is actually another way to again make it more inclusive because it’s a step in the right direction.”
Job-sharing is not something new
Job-sharing a seat in parliament is not a new concept. In 2012, a Labor politician in the UK introduced a bill that would allow job-sharing with the aim of making parliament more diverse. At the time – just 13 years ago – the British parliament was more than three-quarters male. Several members spoke in support of the Bill including conservative MP Robert Halfon, who has a physical disability. He said parliament was a gruelling place. “To be a full-time MP with a significant disability is incredibly difficult,” he said, according to the BBC.
The proposal did not become law. The Greens Party adopted a policy of allowing MPs to job share and in 2015 two candidates were nominated jointly. Sarah Cope was caring for two small children, and Clare Phipps lives with a disability that makes full-time work impossible. Their bid failed.
“But they wanted to highlight the discrepancy between employment law and electoral law,” party spokesman James Doyle said, per the BBC. Lawmakers in Wales are considering the move.
The demands on politicians and their staffers were exposed in Australia last year. Higgins lies side-by-side with the seat of Kooyong, which was won by Teal independent Monique Ryan in the 2022 rout. Ryan’s chief-of-staff, Sally Rugg, sued Ryan and the Commonwealth for “knowing and systematic” labour standards breaches.
In documents provided to the federal court, Sally said she was “often working most of [her] waking hours”, and that her working hours “represent 32-plus hours more than the standard working week of 38 hours.” The parties settled out of court.
The job-sharing campaign is dealt a blow
Back in May, Lucy and Bronwen were ramping up their campaign when they were dealt a blow. The AEC announced a redraw of the electoral boundaries and abolished the electorate of Higgins. The seat Lucy and Bronwen wanted to share no longer existed.
“It was really disappointing,” Lucy says. “We knew about the redistribution process, but we didn’t expect Higgins to be abolished.”
They decided to run for the senate and formed the Better Together Party to do so. “Together we do a great job of working through [roadblocks] and forging ahead because we believe that what we are doing is so important,” Lucy says.
What’s next for the job-sharing duo?
Other challenges remain. In November the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) released a statement saying it holds no opinion on the social or practical question of job-sharing in parliament but would be required by law to reject any nomination made by multiple individuals for one candidacy:
“The AEC is compelled to administer electoral laws as passed by Parliament, which does not allow two people to nominate for a single Senate or House of Representatives vacancy.”
Kim disputes this: “On its face, there is nothing that says that only one person can nominate. When you’re a senator, can only have the power of one senator. They can only have one vote. They can only share one entitlement but there’s actually nothing in the electoral act that says: one person, one senator.
“I think it will be healthy for us as a nation to address this and think through that this actually is enhancing our representative democracy and is something that should be allowed,” Kim continues.
University of Sydney Professor Anne Twomey disagrees, saying “If every electorate could have two or more job-sharing members, it would be absolutely chaotic.
“The constitution simply does not contemplate a ‘member’ being compromised of two or more people,” she wrote in The Conversation. “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.”
Lucy Bradlow and Bronwen Bock say they are prepared to take the matter to court.
“We feel so strongly that it’s an important change for our society,” Bronwen says. “It makes us more determined than ever when roadblocks come up to work out how to forge ahead.”
For more information on Bron and Lucy’s campaign, check out the Better Together Party website.
