Annual Report 2005–06
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889 KBOutput Group 1—Clerk’s Office
| Outputs | ||
|---|---|---|
Provision of sound and timely
advice on proceedings of the Senate and its committees, and
leadership and strategic direction for the department. |
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| Performance indicators | Performance results | |
| Quality | The degree of satisfaction of the President, Deputy President, committee members and senators, as expressed through formal and informal feedback mechanisms, with the quality and timeliness of advice and support and the achievement of key tasks. | Feedback from the President, Deputy President, committee members and senators about the quality and timeliness of advice and the achievement of key tasks indicated ongoing high levels of satisfaction. |
| Advice, documentation, publications and draft reports are accurate and of a high standard. | All advices, documents, publications and draft reports remained of a high standard and none was shown to be inaccurate. | |
| Timeliness | Meetings held, documentation provided and reports produced within timeframes set by the Senate or the committee, as relevant. | All of the indicators relating to timeliness were met to the satisfaction of senators. |
| Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice updated each six months; new printed edition produced regularly. | Supplements to the eleventh edition of Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice were produced at six‑monthly intervals and tabled in the Senate on 10 August 2005 and 7 February 2006. | |
| Procedural Information Bulletin produced two days after end of sitting fortnights. | The Procedural Information Bulletin was
produced within the specified timeframe. A new, more comprehensive manual for clerks at the table replaced an earlier document. |
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| Other procedural resources updated and augmented as required. | All other procedural resources were kept up to date. | |
| Quantity | As required, on request, or proactively, to facilitate proceedings. | Advices were produced in accordance
with demand and proactively to facilitate proceedings. Sufficient copies of all publications for which the office was responsible were produced to enable access immediately after they were published or tabled, and relevant reports were published on the internet within minutes of being tabled in the Senate. |
Analysis
The Clerk’s Office consists of the Clerk, the Deputy Clerk and their executive assistants.
The Clerk is the Secretary of the Department of the Senate and, in accordance with the Parliamentary Service Act 1999, is responsible, under the President of the Senate, for managing the department. The Clerk is also the principal adviser to the President and senators on proceedings in the Senate, parliamentary privilege, committee proceedings and their outcomes in the chamber, and other parliamentary matters. In these roles the Clerk is supported by the Deputy Clerk, who also chairs the department’s Audit and Evaluation Committee.
The Clerk’s Office experienced a 50 per cent turnover in its staff during 2005–06 owing to the retirement of long‑serving staff members. While statistically significant, the number of staff involved was only two. Nonetheless, the turnover of staff represented a considerable loss of corporate knowledge. By recruiting during the winter and summer long adjournments and filling both positions with minimal delay, the office minimised disruption to its provision of services.
The full‑time equivalent staffing level for the Clerk’s Office for 2005–06 remained unchanged from the 2004–05 figure of 4.0, reflecting recruitment efficiency. Other offices, however, made minor savings by quickly filling vacancies consequential on the promotion of a serving Senior Executive Service (SES) officer to the Deputy Clerk’s position and by having affected staff undertake extended duties in the interim (see output groups 2 and 3).
The cost of the office for 2005–06 was $1.0 million.
Procedural advice
Providing procedural and constitutional advice is the primary function of the Clerk’s Office. The office gives oral and written advice but records only written advice because of the difficulty of quantifying oral advice. The office may provide the advice proactively or on request.
Table 2 shows the number and kinds of written advices provided during 2005–06, while Figure 3 shows each kind as a proportion of the total. The figures for 2005–06 include two new categories of advice to Senate committees and submissions to committees generally, which have not been differentiated in previous years but have become statistically significant. The total figure was on a par with totals for the previous two years, which were themselves well above the average to that time.
| Category | No. provided |
|---|---|
| Privilege—advices to Privileges Committee | 0 |
| Privilege—advices to President on matters raised by senators | 8 |
| Privilege—other advices | 11 |
| Other advices to President or Deputy President | 20 |
| Advices to other senators | 55 |
| Advices to Senate committees | 23 |
| Submissions to committees | 10 |
| Advices to other persons and bodies | 22 |
| Total | 149 |
Figure 3 Written advices provided by the Clerk, 2004–05
Subjects covered included the conduct of committee hearings and the scope of committee chairs’ authority; grounds for public interest immunity claims by ministers; appropriations and parliamentary control of finance; unparliamentary behaviour; estimates hearings and government directions to witnesses; and the effect of disallowance of legislative instruments. Unusually, no advice was provided to the Committee of Privileges during 2005–06, reflecting that committee’s historically low workload (see below).
Email gave senators almost immediate access to requested advice. This was particularly useful during estimates hearings, with most senators in the committee rooms able to use laptops because of recent cabling enhancements.
Committees
The office is responsible for the administration of three Senate standing committees.
Procedure Committee
The Clerk of the Senate continued to serve as secretary to the Procedure Committee, which responds to references from the Senate or the President by evaluating, and recommending improvements to, Senate procedures.
The committee met three times in 2005–06 to finalise several major matters that remained outstanding at the end of 2004–05. It presented two reports, covering a total of five procedural matters: declaration of share trading under the senators’ interests resolutions; unanswered questions and orders for documents; repeated motions for the suspension of standing orders; storage of Senate documents; and unauthorised disclosure of committee proceedings. In June 2006, the committee received a new reference from the Senate on proposals to alter the structure of the Senate committee system. The committee is required to report on this matter in August 2006.
Committee of Privileges
The Deputy Clerk served as secretary to the Committee of Privileges. The committee protects the integrity of Senate and committee proceedings by considering matters possibly amounting to contempts of the Senate that are referred to the committee by the Senate as a result of concerns raised by other committees or individual senators. The Committee of Privileges also administers the right‑of‑reply mechanism for people seeking to respond to adverse comment made about them in the Senate.
The committee’s workload was significantly lower than in previous years. It met nine times during the year (a reduction from 14 in 2004–05) and held no public hearings. For the first time since 1991, the committee received no new references from the Senate during the 12‑month period this report covers. A proposed reference was defeated on party lines in September 2005, only the second such occasion. New procedures for dealing with the unauthorised disclosure of committee proceedings may also have influenced the committee’s workload.
The committee presented five reports based on drafts prepared by the secretariat (one more than in the previous year). One report dealt with the reference outstanding at the end of 2004–05, while three were right‑of‑reply matters referred to the committee by the President of the Senate. The remaining report was the latest edition of the committee’s general report, which summarises its procedures and practices on a cumulative basis since its establishment in 1966.
The committee had no references under consideration at the end of the year.
Committee of Senators’ Interests
The Deputy Clerk served as secretary to the Committee of Senators’ Interests and Registrar of Senators’ Interests. The committee continued to supervise the Register of Senators’ Interests and give guidance to senators to fulfil the requirements of Senate resolutions relating to declarations of pecuniary interests and gifts.
The committee met five times during the year (an increase on only one meeting in 2004–05). In the second half of 2005, the committee decided to review arrangements for the registration of senators’ interests. The secretariat provided support to the committee in conducting a survey of all senators, analysing the results and considering changes to the resolutions, explanatory notes and registration forms. The committee’s report on this matter was one of two presented during the year, the other being the annual report required by its terms of reference.
As required under the relevant resolution of the Senate, all senators provided a new statement of interests following the first meeting of the Senate after the new Senate term began on 1 July 2005. Volumes of statements were prepared by the secretariat and tabled on 15 September 2005. Six‑monthly updates to the register were tabled on 7 December 2005 and 21 June 2006. Statements and updates of departmental SES officers were tabled on the same dates.
Procedural information
The main vehicle for procedural information is Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice. Publication of the eleventh edition was reported in last year’s report. In accordance with performance targets, the Clerk produced two six‑monthly supplements during 2005–06. Issuing supplements ensures that this essential reference work is always up to date.
After each sitting fortnight or period of estimates hearings, the Clerk’s Office produced issues of the Procedural Information Bulletin which identified and analysed matters of significant procedural interest. A new feature of the bulletin in 2005–06 was the addition of occasional notes on aspects of parliamentary law, procedure and practice.
In addition to these documents, the Clerk continued to produce publications on procedure in various forms.
The Deputy Clerk produced a new, more comprehensive manual for clerks at the table, replacing an earlier collection of training notes.
The Clerk and Deputy Clerk contributed to training programs on parliamentary matters. Of particular importance was the orientation program for new senators conducted in July 2005, which combined theoretical and practical training on Senate procedure and practices. The program was longer than previous programs, in response to suggestions made by earlier groups of new senators about the curriculum. In particular, it allocated more time to simulated chamber proceedings.
Information about Senate officers’ presentations and papers appears in Appendix 5.
Factors, events and trends influencing performance
It was not clear at the end of 2004–05 whether the impending changes in the Senate’s composition and the resulting government party majority would affect the work of the Clerk’s Office. Although the first change to Senate procedures resulting from that majority was not proposed formally until June 2006, the high level of demand for advisory services continued a trend evident in the previous two years.
The rejection of many references to committees, including the unusual rejection of a reference to the Committee of Privileges, and statements by ministers about limiting the scope of questions at estimates hearings, attributable to the government party majority, accounted for part of the continuing demand for the advisory services of the Clerk’s Office.
Figure 4 shows the trends in the provision of written advices.
Figure 4 Trends in the provision of advices by the Clerk’s Office
Evaluation
The principal medium for formal evaluation of services provided by the Clerk’s Office is the biennial survey of senators’ satisfaction, due to be conducted again in early 2007.
Apart from this mechanism, services provided by the Clerk’s Office often attract comment during the estimates process, either when the Department of the Senate appears before the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee or when advice provided by the Clerk’s Office to senators or committees is immediately tested in public. Unsolicited evaluation of this type occurred in each of the three rounds of estimates hearings in 2005–06. On no occasion was advice from the Clerk’s Office shown to be inaccurate or wanting in quality. Advice from government sources is only rarely subject to such immediate and public contestability.
Evaluation of specific activities, such as contributions to training programs, occurs through participant feedback, usually in the form of written comments. On this measure, recipients of these services were well satisfied.
The strong demand for advice is itself a measure of senators’ satisfaction with the advice they receive.
Performance outlook
Over the next 12 months, the Clerk’s Office will continue to respond to the needs of the Senate and senators, meeting existing and emerging requirements with the highest possible level of professionalism. Mooted changes to the Senate committee system, if adopted, are likely to be a significant focus. The Clerk’s Office will update procedural publications to reflect any changes and produce further supplements to the eleventh edition of Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice. New staff will continue to develop their knowledge and expertise and will strive to maintain the historically high performance levels of the office.