Anthony Albanese reprised his well known mantra – that we must “turn the temperature down” – as politicians and the community generally struggled to come to grips with the alleged attack on independent MP Helen Haines.

But as the days pass (though the shock remains), the temperature has risen in some unexpected ways, with increasing heat on the prime minister himself.

The most dramatic example was an outburst by crossbench senator Fatima Payman, who defected from Labor last term.

Albanese has used his discretion to refuse Payman the personal staff he’s accorded various other crossbenchers. The PM has exercised his power over MPs’ staffing in a quite arbitrary way, which has disadvantaged, as well as Payman, One Nation and also the independent member for Fowler Dai Le, who won a Labor seat in 2022. Recently Pauline Hanson, Payman and Le teamed up at a joint news conference to complain about the treatment.

At a Senate estimates committee hearing on Monday night, Payman had an angry meltdown.

“My staff are expected to do the job of an office that has seven full-timers, so I don’t know how the ‘same job, same pay’ thing that Labor keeps bragging about applies to my team,” she said.

“They can’t take this........

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