Steps will be taken to improve workplace safety in Australia’s seat of government, but cracking down on the bad behaviour of politicians could be a bigger challenge.

Legislation has been introduced on Thursday to make an interim parliamentary workplace support service (PWSS) permanent.

The service was one of the recommendations of the landmark Set the Standard report, which unveiled widespread misconduct within federal parliament.

Introducing the legislation to parliament, Assistant Public Service Minister Patrick Gorman said the laws would address the previous lack of human resources for MPs and their staff.

“The parliament is a unique workplace, but it’s also one of Australia’s most prominent workplaces,” he said.

“The people that work here should have the systems they need to go about their work in a professional, safe and respectful environment.”

The new support service would be required to report each year on cultural change indicators, such as gender and diversity, as well as work to prevent bullying and sexual harassment.

“It is important that people can see that progress is being made in maintaining a professional, safe and respectful parliamentary workplace,” Mr Gorman said.

The next step will be to establish the Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission, which will be tasked with misconduct investigations and will be able to enforce sanctions against individuals.

But despite parliamentarians being “deadly serious” about making the building a much better place to work, Minister for Women Katy Gallagher said an enforcement body might be more difficult to establish.

“I think this one will be a more difficult one to land in legislation, because it does for the first time deal with things like sanctions of parliamentarians,” she told ABC Radio.

“This body, once established – and we will get moving on it very quickly – will be the enforcement arm of those codes of conduct, so (it is) an important part of the architecture that we’re going to put in place.”

The interim service will continue to handle complaints and investigations until the separate body is set up.

In the past, human resource services have been provided via the finance department but parliament will now have a dedicated facility.

Senator Gallagher said there was widespread support for the authority from across the political spectrum and it was due to be in operation by October 1.

“The (interim) PWSS is currently offering complaint resolution and some support services to staff,” she said.

“Under the new model, it will be created as an independent authority and it will have more abilities and additional resourcing, which we put in the last budget to provide those services.”

– AAP