House of Representatives Annual Report 2007-08

The work of Output Group 1.1 is delivered primarily through the Clerk’s Office, the Chamber Research Office and the Table Office. Other departmental work areas also contribute as required.

During the year, we provided effective secretariat and advisory support for the Chamber and Main Committee of the House of Representatives. Our main functions were the:

In 2007–08, the budget allocation for Output Group 1.1 was $4.2 million and expenditure was $3.6 million. The financial resources for the output group are summarised in Table 1; staff levels, by location, are shown in Appendix 10.

Performance

The results of the department’s annual survey of members indicated high levels of satisfaction with our work, consistent with the findings of earlier surveys. All respondents were satisfied with our advice and support, with ‘extreme’ or ‘high’ satisfaction reported as follows:

We continued to achieve high levels of performance as measured against performance indicators, including meeting targets set in the business plan and performing well against budget. Appendix 1 provides a summary of performance information.

Much of our work is directly related to supporting the sittings of the House and meetings of the Main Committee. Quantitative information on the sittings of the House and meetings of the Main Committee in 2007–08 and the previous year is shown in Table 2.

The number of sittings and meeting hours of the House and Main Committee was lower during the year because of the general election. There was a decrease (6 per cent) in House sittings and meeting hours and an increase in Main Committee meetings (22 per cent) and hours of sittings (26 per cent) by comparison with the most recent equivalent year in the parliamentary cycle (2004–05). Despite the reduced number of sittings, there was substantial legislative activity during the year, particularly on a per sitting basis, necessitating corresponding support from the department.

Further information on the business of the House and the Main Committee is in Appendix 2 and in the publication Work of the Session (available on the Parliament of Australia website).

Advice to members and House secretariat support

Advice

The Clerk, Deputy Clerk and other staff members provided advice to the Speaker and members on the practice and procedures of the House of Representatives.

Our oral and written advice to members ranged from immediate support by Clerks-at-the-Table for the Speaker, ministers, shadow ministers and others during proceedings, to detailed written advice. Subjects included the following: the application of the practice and standing orders of the House; procedural options for the conduct of business; the terms of motions and amendments to motions, including of censure; arrangements for the opening of Parliament and the swearing-in of members; the admissibility of amendments to legislation; parliamentary behaviour and language; privilege matters; constitutional requirements; and requirements of the House in respect of the registration of members’ interests.

Feedback from the Speaker and members indicated a high level of satisfaction with these services.

Programming and facilitation of business

Throughout 2007–08, we provided advice and services to facilitate sittings of the House, including:

Table 3 provides details of the number of questions in writing to ministers dealt with by the House of Representatives for the period 2003–04 to 2007–08. There was a marked reduction in the number of questions in writing in 2007–08.

a Net of any questions withdrawn
b The responsibility for responding to questions in writing rests with the individual ministers to whom the questions are put.
c Election year

Rt Hon. Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, addressed members and senators in the House on 11 September 2007. Picture courtesy of Auspic

All sittings required the coordination of people, documents and actions, and programming of the following categories of business:

A longitudinal view of the amount of time the House has devoted to each of these types of business is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5 Government and private members’ business and business of the House (%)

The Clerk of the House of Representatives in discussions with new members, 16 January 2008.

Changes to private members’ business

On the first sitting day of the Forty-second Parliament, the House amended the standing orders to move the time for the presentation and consideration of committee and delegation reports, private members’ business and grievance debate from Mondays to Fridays. The total time for the items was increased and a dedicated day was provided for non-government business. The first of these scheduled Fridays took place on 22 February. Following this initial sitting, the government decided not to hold sittings on Fridays and moved to schedule non-government business on Mondays with the same allocation of time for private members’ business as in the previous Parliament. As a result, one hour was provided for these items in the House from 8.30 pm on Mondays, with the rest of the time being taken in the Main Committee, between 6.40 and 9.30 pm. The time for grievance debate was reduced by twenty minutes.

Processing and drafting of bills

Legislation

As in previous years, our support for the legislative process in 2007–08 included the following:

The development of a new system for the electronic storing, managing and publishing of bills proceeded during 2007–08. The final development and testing phase and implementation are planned to occur during the first half of the coming year.

Legislative workload

Table 4 shows the number of bills introduced in the House and the number of bills passed by both houses and assented to, for the past five years. Bills and amendments dealt with by the House during this period are shown in Appendix 2.

a Includes bills that passed both houses in the financial year but were assented to in the following financial year.
b Election year

In brief, the Table Office prepared 17 third reading prints (14 in 2006–07), 130 assent prints (184 in 2006–07), and one schedule of amendments (one in 2006–07). All documents reflected accurately the decisions of the houses and were processed promptly, and all deadlines were met.

During the year, 167 bills were introduced (218 in 2006–07), of which 153 were initiated in the House of Representatives and 14 were received from the Senate; 142 bills passed both houses (207 in 2006–07), of which 130 were initiated in the House of Representatives (184 in 2006–07) and 12 in the Senate (23 in 2006–07).

In 2007–08, the House passed 164 bills (202 in 2006–07). This represented 3.4 bills on average each sitting day compared with 2.8 bills on average passed in the previous year. The House amended 10 per cent of the bills it passed (7 per cent in 2006–07).

The House amended 17 bills that were initiated in the House (14 in 2006–07). The Table Office incorporated the amendments into the text of the bills and arranged for their reprinting (as third reading prints) before transmittal to the Senate. In addition, the House agreed to Senate amendments to nine House bills (26 in 2006–07), with further processing by the office before the bills were presented, as assent prints, to the Governor-General for assent.

The House amended one bill initiated in the Senate (one in 2006–07) and the office prepared the schedule of amendments for transmittal to and consideration by the Senate.

Legislative drafting

The department drafts bills and amendments for private members and checks second reading (in principle) amendments for conformity with the standing orders. It also prepares bills and amendments in correct form and arranges copies for circulation. Trends in the legislative drafting services provided by the department for private members are reflected in Table 5, which shows a reduction of activity in election years. The new bills management system referred to previously will include a facility for managing the drafting of bills and amendments.

An election year

There were three distinct periods of activity for the output group during the year—the final months of the Forty-first Parliament, the period following the dissolution of the House (election period), and the initial months of the Forty-second Parliament. The final months of the Forty-first Parliament involved heightened legislative activity as the government sought to finalise its legislative agenda before the dissolution of the House on 17 October. During the election period, we addressed a number of administrative tasks associated with the end of one parliament and preparation for the next, including compiling the records and documents of the Forty-first Parliament—the bills volumes, the Votes and Proceedings (and Votes Index), the Notice Papers, and the Index to Papers Presented to Parliament. For the opening of the Forty-second Parliament on 12 February 2008, we organised the procedural aspects of the opening day in the House, including the swearing-in of members, and drafted amendments to the standing orders. We have subsequently focused on establishing the new parliament and supporting procedural developments.

In the survey of members, as in previous years, all members who had used our legislative drafting service indicated their satisfaction with the service (see Appendix 11).

Record of proceedings and House documents

Votes and proceedings

The Votes and Proceedings continued to provide an accurate, comprehensive and concise record of proceedings. The record has been available online since 1995. The draft document for each sitting day is published usually within an hour of the adjournment of the House.

The Votes and Proceedings are prepared from the Votes Officer’s Minutes, an electronic record of the proceedings of the House and the Main Committee compiled progressively throughout a sitting day. Since May 2006, anyone with access to the internet has been able to follow events in the House and Main Committee as they occur. External clients continue to provide positive feedback on this service.

The compilation of the Votes Officer’s Minutes and the Votes and Proceedings is a demanding and time-consuming process. This year, duties were reallocated to more effectively share the workload between the staff involved. This has also enhanced our capability to undertake a key process.

Last year, we reported the decision to digitise the Votes and Proceedings from 1901 and to make them available online. This will increase access to House records and the efficiency of that access process. The project is nearing completion and the complete record of the Votes and Proceedings will be available online in the coming year.

Documents

During the year, we processed all documents presented to the House and recorded their details in the Votes and Proceedings and the Index of Papers Presented to the Parliament. We made copies available to members and their staff and others, principally in Parliament House, in response to requests, including through an online daily document-ordering system. The original documents were added to the records of the House, which we continued to maintain (see below, ‘House records’).

Significant growth continued in the number of documents presented to the House. In
2007–08, 8,073 documents (7,476 in 2006–07) were presented to the House, an increase of 8 per cent. As previously reported, there has been consistent growth in the number of documents presented by means of the ‘deemed to have been presented’ mechanism following commencement of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003. The operation of that Act was subject to review during the year, and the department made a submission to the review. Discussions also began during the year with the Office of Legislative Drafting and Publishing on possible streamlining of the receipt and processing of data relating to legislative instruments.

To meet the needs of clients, each sitting day the Table Office prepares and issues in electronic and hard-copy form a Disallowable Instruments List. The list provides details of all instruments presented to the House that are subject to disallowance, by number of sitting days remaining for a notice of disallowance to be lodged.

Parliamentary Papers Series

The Parliamentary Papers Series consists of documents of a substantial nature presented to the Parliament. This year, the 2005 series was completed for distribution to recipients. The delay in distribution of full-year sets results from the tardy provision, by a small number of agencies, of copies of documents for the series. The Publications Committee reports to the House on non-complying agencies. A survey of recipients was undertaken during the year to ascertain copy requirements in light of the Presiding Officers’ decisions of September 2006 on the future distribution of the series, including the option of a subscription service. As a result of the Presiding Officers’ decisions and following the survey, the number of organisations receiving the series has decreased by one to fifty-three; four organisations have purchased subscriptions to the series; and the number of copies of documents required for the series has been reduced from 150 to 100. This will reduce the printing costs for government agencies, with total savings conservatively in the order of $0.25 million annually.

House records

We are responsible for the custody, preservation of, and access to the official records of the House, including Acts, bills, the Votes and Proceedings and all documents presented to the House, dating from 1901. The records are stored in a basement archive area at Parliament House.

The long-term relocation of House records into archival-quality containers and implementation of preventive conservation measures for the records themselves continued during the year. Work on the collection of petitions presented to the House was completed and work on Chamber documents will be completed in the coming year.

Previous reports have referred to a scoping study to ensure the archive storage environment met document preservation standards and to reduce potential risks arising from building systems and infrastructure. Funding for the first phase of a redevelopment of the basement storage area was agreed to by the Department of Parliamentary Services during the year and the project was commenced.

Petitions

In response to a report of the Standing Committee on Procedure on the petitioning process, in February 2008 the House agreed to significant changes to the way in which petitions are processed and considered, including the establishment of a Standing Committee on Petitions.

Table 6 provides details of petitions presented to the House, and the number of signatories, for the past five years.

The reduction in the total number of petitions in 2007–08 can be partly attributed to:

In previous years, petitions with the same terms but lodged by different Members of Parliament were treated as separate petitions. With the changed arrangements for tabling of petitions, where a number of petitions in the same terms are received at the same time, the Petitions Committee has combined them for the purposes of presentation.

Research

During the period following the dissolution of the House, the Chamber Research Office focused on planning issues for the longer term and a range of ‘housekeeping matters’ that arise at the end of each parliament. Since the resumption of sittings, the office has continued to provide statistics and research on a range of procedural matters to the Speaker, Leader of the House, Manager of Opposition Business, party whips and individual members as well as senior officers of the department. The assistance included:

Feedback from the Speaker, members and the public on the provision of procedural and statistical advice by the Chamber Research Office continued to be very positive.

Publications

Following the opening of the Forty-second Parliament in February 2008, the House agreed to a number of amendments to the standing orders. Further changes followed in March and June 2008. The Chamber Research Office is responsible for the maintenance, publication and distribution of the standing orders. During the year, it managed the production of two editions of the orders and one update, and their publication both in hard copy and in electronic format.

A number of publications produced by the office were updated and reissued for the new parliament, including publications of the department’s Infosheets series, the third edition of House of Representatives Guide to Procedures and a booklet, The Speaker of the House of Representatives. Work has continued on the next edition of House of Representatives Practice, a major reference work for the Parliament. The next (sixth edition) is scheduled for completion in the first half of 2009. The text of the current (fifth) edition was processed for eComPress software, which provides members and staff with instant access to the electronic publication on their desktop.

The office continued to produce two publications detailing procedural issues of note, following each sitting fortnight. The Procedural Digest, a subject-based record of proceedings, is now available on the Parliament of Australia website, while the Procedural Extracts, derived from a precedents database, have a more restricted distribution, primarily to internal users. A new online publication, the Statistical Digest, provides details of certain activities following each sitting fortnight and supplements the six-monthly publication Work of the Session.

Parliamentary committees

In addition to the support provided to the Chamber and Main Committee of the House of Representatives, the department continued to provide effective secretariat and advisory support to a number of House committees dealing with the powers and procedures of the House and to a joint committee.

The Forty-second Parliament made a number of changes to these committees: the Privileges and Members’ Interests committees were combined, the Selection Committee was abolished and its functions assumed by the party whips (with support provided by the department), and the Standing Committee on Petitions was established. Committees supported by Output Group 1.1 in the Forty-first and Forty-second parliaments are shown in Table 7.

During the year, the committees held a total of 33 meetings (56 in 2006–07) for 20 hours (26 in 2006–07) and produced 14 reports (33 in 2006–07). Details of meetings and reports are set out in Appendixes 3 and 4.

Standing Committee on Procedure

The committee presented one report in the period, Making a Difference: Petitioning the House of Representatives, tabled in September 2007. The report examined the petitioning system and made seven recommendations aimed at enhancing the status of petitions and assisting the public in communicating with the Parliament. The committee recommended the establishment of a Petitions Committee, and this occurred in February 2008.

In the Forty-second Parliament, the committee has initiated inquiries into the maintenance of standing and sessional orders, procedures associated with the opening day of a new parliament and the conduct of the business of the House.

Standing Committee on Petitions

The committee was established in February 2008 and receives and processes petitions. It is also responsible for responding to petitions on behalf of the House. Much of the early work of the committee has been in raising public awareness of the new requirements for petitions (including the need for someone to be identified as a ‘principal petitioner’) and liaising with interested parties wishing to petition the House to ensure that their petition meets standing order requirements.

Under the new arrangements, petitions may be referred to the minister responsible for the administration of a particular matter and it is expected that the minister will respond within ninety days of presentation. Since the committee began its operations, seven responses have been tabled in the House. This compares very favourably with past practice (three responses received from 1999 to 2007). Ministerial responses are published in Hansard and are now also available on the Parliament of Australia website.

The committee intends to hold regular round-table hearings with petitioners and other interested parties, to provide further opportunities for issues to be raised with the House. These will commence next financial year.

The committee is able to inquire into and report to the House on any matter relating to petitions and the petitions system, and in this context has commenced an inquiry into electronic petitions. The committee expects to report on this next financial year.

Standing Committee on Publications

The Joint Committee on Publications presented a report on its inquiry, Printing Standards for Documents Presented to Parliament, on 20 September 2007.[3] The report amended the printing standards to provide increased flexibility for author bodies while retaining the principle of achieving value for money.

Standing Committee of Privileges and Members’ Interests

The Standing Committee of Privileges presented two reports in the Forty-first Parliament. Both reports were presented under the resolution agreed to by the House to allow individual citizens to have published in Hansard a response to an adverse reference to them in the House.

The Standing Committee of Privileges and Members’ Interests reported on 20 March 2008 on the operation of the Committee of Members’ Interests during 2007. The Register of Members’ Interests for the Forty-second Parliament was presented on 12 March 2008, and two sets of alterations of interests were presented during the period.

Information technology

Our commitment to maintaining and developing efficient and reliable information technology (IT) systems continued during 2007–08.

Together with the other parliamentary departments, the department evaluated tenders and subsequently signed a contract in October 2007 with SAIC International for replacement of the Bills and ParlInfo systems. The project was managed by the Department of Parliamentary Services and we worked in partnership with DPS and the Department of the Senate at various levels— project board, business focus group and project management. At year’s end, user acceptance testing for the new systems was scheduled in July and August, with implementation planned in the Spring sittings 2008. The new systems will enhance access to parliamentary information, achieve processing efficiencies, and be more robust technically.

In partnership with the Department of the Senate, we reviewed Table Office applications—the Document Production System and the Table Office database—and subsequently initiated a project with the Department of Parliamentary Services to update the Document Production System for Microsoft Office 2007. The project is planned to be finalised in 2008. We will need to consider redevelopment of the Document Production System and associated database in the longer term.

We initiated an investigation of the practicality and feasibility of streamlining the processing of deemed documents, through transfer of data from the Office of Legislative Drafting and Publishing. A report providing advice for the short and longer term is expected in the Spring sittings.

We have worked to redesign and expand the existing petitions database to meet the needs of the Petitions Committee in fulfilling its role. The system will provide enhanced tracking of petitions and enable a wide range of reports to be produced relating to petitions. It is expected that the database will be in operation early in 2008–09.

Improving performance

The focus in 2007–08 was on consolidation of performance and addressing longer term flexibility and sustainability, with investment in IT, as mentioned. The emphasis on training and development outlined in previous reports continued during the year, as did planning, people management, relationship building and evaluation strategies. As mentioned, savings were achieved, and new products successfully introduced.

Outlook

In 2008–09, the output group will continue providing advice and services of a high standard to support the Chamber and Main Committee of the House of Representatives. Next year will be the first full year of the Forty-second Parliament and it is anticipated that the level of direct support activity for the output group during the year will be high. The workload in supporting the government’s legislative program is also likely to be at trend levels.

A number of major IT projects will be finalised during the year, with training and change management implications. Once these projects are fully implemented, attention will turn to redevelopment of the Document Production System and the Procedural Records System, and support will also be required for the parliamentary project to redevelop the Parliament of Australia website.

Other priorities are the basement archive redevelopment study, records management issues, and supporting the department’s public seminar and publication programs.

[3] Each House of the Parliament has a Publications Committee with power to confer with its counterpart. When undertaking an inquiry these committees are known as the Joint Committee on Publications.

Annual Report 2007–08

Output Group 1.1 — Chamber and Main Committee

OUTPUT GROUP 1.1

INTERMEDIATE OUTCOME

OUTCOME

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