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Chapter 16 - Committees
Evidence
gathering
Briefings, inspections and seminars
Committees may
choose to augment their formal evidence-taking by informal briefings and
inspections which provide committee members with valuable contextual and
background information. One of the more unusual site inspections to have
occurred was undertaken by members of the Standing Committee
on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade who spent a day at sea on the HMAS Swan,
which had been the setting for alleged incidents of sexual harassment into
which the committee was inquiring. The committee reported that these
“experiences made an invaluable contribution to the committee’s understanding
of the issues and circumstances surrounding the incidents on the Swan” (Sexual
Harassment in the Australian Defence Force: Facing the Future Together, PP
147/1994, p. iii). Many other site inspections have occurred in the context of
committee inquiries into rural and regional issues, technology, environmental
issues and transport matters, among others.
The term
briefings is used to describe two different arrangements. If a briefing takes
place at a meeting of a committee, this is simply an in camera hearing in
another guise. Committees are prevented from hearing evidence in camera on
estimates (SO 26(2)), so that kind of briefing is not
available to committees in relation to estimates. If a briefing occurs at a
gathering which is not a committee meeting but simply an informal gathering of
senators who happen also to be members of a committee, the standing orders do
not authorise any of the processes available to a committee, such as taking a
transcript, receiving documents or citing the information provided in a report.
This limits the utility of briefings.
Another means of information gathering is the seminar or conference,
sponsored or co-sponsored by a committee, which brings together experts in a
field for presentation of papers and discussions with committee members. The Standing
Committee on Finance and Public Administration, for example, held a conference
in association with the Centre for Research in Public Sector Management, University of Canberra, on public service
reform. The committee had a standing reference on the central administration of
the Australian Government under which it reviewed a government report. Rather
than proceeding by way of public hearings, the committee decided to co-host a
conference involving senior public servants, past and present, unionists,
academics, consultants and journalists. The committee presented the conference
papers and proceedings as a report of the committee in order to contribute to
better informed debate on the subject but without drawing conclusions from the
conference information or making recommendations (Public Service Reform,
PP 149/1994, 150/1994).
Such proceedings
are usually not conducted as formal meetings of committees and there would be
some doubt that they fall within the definition of “proceedings in
parliament” which attract parliamentary privilege. A speaker
presenting a paper may not have the protection afforded to a witness giving
evidence before the committee. Committees have held such informal proceedings
on the basis that doubt on whether the discussions would be covered by
parliamentary privilege was not a significant issue in the circumstances.
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