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Chapter 16 - Committees

Disqualification for bias

Occasionally it is suggested that senators should not serve on committees because it may appear that they have prejudged matters under inquiry or cannot bring an unbiased mind to those matters.

The question of whether members of the Committee of Privileges should be disqualified because, having been involved in earlier inquiries relevant to the committee’s current inquiries, they may have pre-judged the issues, arose in relation to the committee’s 17^th and 18^th reports. In its 18^th report (PP 461/1989), the committee reaffirmed the principle that it was for individual senators to determine for themselves whether they should disqualify themselves in any particular circumstances (p. 129). Advice from the Clerk of the Senate, tabled with the report, cited several cases where members and senators had withdrawn or not withdrawn from inquiries in response to suggestions that they may have pre-judged the issues before those inquiries, and concluded “that questions concerning the service of members on a committee where they may be regarded as not entirely impartial should be decided by the individual members concerned, and that there is no general rule or convention which may be applied to all cases” (advice dated 1/2/89, published in Volume 3 of committee documents tabled with the 18^th report of the Committee of Privileges, 16/6/1989, J.1921; see also advice dated 18/1/1989). In the advice provided to the committee, the following examples were cited:

• A challenge was foreshadowed to three members of the Select Committee on Allegations Concerning a Judge who had been members of the earlier Select Committee on the Conduct of a Judge. The three members did not disqualify themselves and the committee reported that the members considered their previous service “did not preclude them from making a proper and unbiased judgment on the matters before this committee on the basis of the evidence to be heard by it, or that they had any sense of vested interest in maintaining their earlier decision” (Select Committee on Allegations Concerning a Judge, report, PP 271/1984, p. 3). The challenge did not eventuate, nor was the report queried because the three senators had participated in the inquiry.

• Senator Wheeldon did not participate in a Committee of Privileges inquiry into the unauthorised publication of a proposed report by a select committee of which he was a member, but another member of the select committee, Senator Branson, served on the Committee of Privileges, stating that he did not think it necessary for him to withdraw unless something arose to alter that decision (Committee of Privileges, 1^st report, PP 163/1971, p. 4).

As was pointed out in the advice to the Privileges Committee, senators are called upon to express views and make decisions on many matters, and it would be too restrictive to expect them to disqualify themselves from any inquiry into matters on which they had expressed views or made decisions.

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