Pauline Hanson has accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of “weaponising” his power to allocate personal staff to political opponents as One Nation demands more employees.

Staffing is emerging as a worsening feud between some crossbenchers and the government as requests for extra personnel go unapproved.

On Thursday, Hanson said Albanese was trying to divide her party by offering One Nation MP David Farley an “unsolicited allocation” of a new personal adviser paid up to $200,000.

“For months, One Nation has been fighting for fair, transparent and objective allocation of staffing for parliamentarians. The Prime Minister has refused to respond to these calls,” Hanson said in a statement posted to X.

“Yet astonishingly, this week the Prime Minister provided a letter to David directly granting a personal adviser 3 position, paid up to $200,000, effective immediately. David has rejected this unsolicited allocation.”

Hanson said she had decided to “expose these grubby dealings” because the public deserved to know what the Albanese government did “behind closed doors”.

She said the government was trying to “exert undue political influence” over politicians.

“The Prime Minister should not personally control the resources available to his political opponents,” she said.

“While this power has always been open to abuse, it has, in our view, been weaponised to an unprecedented extent under this Labor government and this Prime Minister.”

The ABC reported that the extra staff position offered to Farley was the same as Barnaby Joyce was allocated when he joined One Nation.

Albanese decides extra personal staff levels above the five electorate officers that all parliamentarians are allowed.

Last month, Hanson unexpectedly stood alongside political opponents Dai Le MP and Senator Fatima Payman, calling for a revamp of how politicians are allocated personal staff.

Modelling showed One Nation had 0.83 staff per parliamentarian, compared to Labor’s 4.09 and the Coalition’s 1.47.

They joined forces on the issue despite Hanson and Payman having erupted into a blazing row on the Senate floor in 2024 after Hanson tried to probe her counterpart’s citizenship.

This week Payman, who defected from Labor in mid-2024 to sit as an independent, accused Albanese of making an example of her by deliberately palming off her pleas for more staff.

She said her application had sat idle for almost two years while she believed staff requests for newer MPs and senators had since been accommodated.

“Has the Prime Minister refused to make a decision on my request, because unlike all the other defectors, I defected from the Labor Party?” she asked Special Minister of State Don Farrell at a Senate estimates hearing.

“Am I being made an example of?”

Payman said Albanese had sat on her application while granting more staff to senators Lidia Thorpe, Tammy Tyrrell and David Van as well as MP Andrew Gee, who had quit the Greens, Jacqui Lambie Network, Liberals and Nationals respectively.

Newer parliamentarians’ requests had also been processed speedily, including for Greens leader David Shoebridge, who took that post only in late September, she said.

“I implore you and the Prime Minister to please look into the fact that my staff are burning out — they can’t take this any longer,” said Payman.

The ex-Labor senator on Monday connected the staffing issue to personal security in light of the alleged attack on independent MP Helen Haines on October 19.

MPs’ personal staff are not responsible for their security.

“Is the Prime Minister waiting for something like what happened to Dr Helen Haines to occur to my office, to me, for him to take our request seriously?” Payman said, in a remark she was asked to withdraw.

“I’ve been waiting two years, and I am tired of looking in my staff’s eyes and saying you just have to deal with this because the Prime Minister is petty and is taking it out on me.”

Payman later said she had apologised to Haines for her “clumsy wording”.

-with AAP