Annual Report 2003–04
Output 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.
- Provision of secretariat and advisory support to the Procedure Committee, the Committee of Privileges and the Committee of Senators’ Interests.
- Provision of procedural information and related services to senators and the Senate Department.
| 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. Advice, documentation, publications and draft reports are accurate and of a high standard. |
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. 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
biennially. Procedural Information Bulletin produced two days after end of sitting fortnights. |
Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice was updated at six-monthly intervals. A new printed edition will be prepared at the end of the current Parliament. The Procedural Information Bulletin was produced within the two-day limit specified in the indicator. |
| Other procedural resources updated and augmented as required. | Revised editions of the Senators’ Guide to Procedures and an internal training manual for clerks at the table were prepared in February 2004. |
| Quantity | |
| As required, on request, or proactively, to facilitate proceedings. | There was a significant increase in
the number of advices provided. 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 two executive assistants.
The Clerk and Deputy Clerk are the principal advisers to the President and senators in relation to proceedings in the Senate, parliamentary privilege, committee proceedings and their outcomes in the chamber, and other parliamentary matters. The Clerk and Deputy Clerk give advice, both within and outside the chamber; ensure that efficient chamber processes are in place; and coordinate research support to assist the Senate and senators in relation to Senate proceedings. The Clerk is the Secretary of the Department of the Senate.
The average staffing level for the year for the Clerk’s Office in 2003–04 was 4.8 staff years. The increase over last year’s level of 4.0 was due to the long-term absence of an officer on paid leave and the need for the position to be temporarily filled in their absence.
The cost of the office for 2003–04 was $1.1 million. This increase from $0.9 million in 2002–03 is attributable to the higher average staffing level.
Procedural advice
Providing procedural and constitutional advice is the primary function of the Clerk’s Office. Advice is given orally and in writing, but is recorded only in the latter case because of the difficulty of quantifying oral advice. Advice may be provided proactively or in response to requests.
The number and kinds of written advices provided during 2003–04 are shown in Table 2, while Figure 3 shows each kind as a proportion of the total. The fact that the number provided in 2003–04 was significantly higher than in previous years (as shown in Figure 4) is largely a reflection of the nature and intensity of the work undertaken by the Senate and its committees during 2003–04. External factors, such as the Prime Minister’s proposals for Senate ‘reform’, also generated demand for advice.
| Category | No. provided |
|---|---|
| Privilege—advices to Privileges Committee | 2 |
| Privilege—advices to President on matters raised by senators | 4 |
| Privilege—other advices | 8 |
| Other advices to President or Deputy President | 13 |
| Advices to other senators | 70 |
| Advices to other persons and bodies | 19 |
| Total | 116 |
Figure 3 Written advices provided by the Clerk, 2003–04
As well as the Prime Minister’s scheme for Senate ‘reform’, subjects covered by advices included: the status of documents before Senate committee inquiries; the effect of Senate actions on certain tariff amendment bills; the Senate’s power to obtain evidence, and related parliamentary conventions; interference with witnesses; parliamentary inquiries and statutory secrecy provisions; entry and search provisions; and the taking of evidence from witnesses who are under police investigation.
Advice was provided as quickly as possible. Senators’ increased use of laptop computers in committee hearings allowed advice provided by email from the Clerk’s Office to be accessed and utilised by senators within a very short time of its being sought.
Committees
The office is responsible for the administration of the following three Senate standing committees.
Procedure Committee
The Clerk of the Senate continued to serve as secretary to the Procedure Committee, which met as required to evaluate and recommend improvements to procedures in the Senate, in response to references from the Senate or the President.
The committee held three private meetings and presented three reports during the year. The matters reported on were:
- the publication of questions on notice and answers to questions on notice
- the reference of tax expenditure statements to estimates hearings
- joint meetings to receive addresses by foreign heads of state
- formal motions
- consideration of government documents
- divisions on Thursdays.
As a result of the reports, various changes were made to Senate standing orders, and the Senate agreed to a resolution recommending that any future parliamentary addresses by visiting heads of state be received by a meeting of the House of Representatives, in the House chamber, to which all senators are invited as guests.
Committee of Privileges
The Deputy Clerk and, from August 2003, the acting Deputy Clerk served as secretary to the Committee of Privileges. The committee protects the integrity of Senate and committee proceedings through its consideration of 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 persons seeking to respond to adverse comment made about them in the Senate.
The committee met 12 times during the year, once more than in each of the previous two years. No public hearings were held.
The committee received five new references from the Senate during 2003–04, in contrast to 2002–03, during which no new references were received. It made five reports to the Senate, based on drafts prepared by the secretariat—a reduction from the total of eight reports reached in each of the previous two years. Two reports related to new references received during 2003–04, while two constituted right of reply reports. The fifth report related to a matter referred to in last year’s annual report, regarding the examination by senior counsel of material seized from the electorate office of a senator by the Queensland Police Service.
At the end of the year, three references remained under consideration: one relating to an allegation of misleading evidence being presented to a committee, and two to the unauthorised disclosure of draft committee reports.
Committee of Senators’ Interests
The Deputy Clerk and, from August 2003, the acting 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.
Changes to the resolutions—mentioned in last year’s annual report, and arising from a report made by the committee in June 2002—were the subject of two further committee meetings before finally being adopted by the Senate on 15 September 2003. Consequential changes to the explanatory notes for statements of registrable interests were agreed to by the committee in October 2003.
The committee, with the assistance of the secretariat, prepared a booklet containing all relevant information about the declaration of interests and gifts. The booklet was tabled in the Senate on 16 October 2003 and distributed widely to senators’ offices. Its contents were also published on the internet.
The committee tabled its annual report on 12 February 2004. As required under the relevant resolution of the Senate, six-monthly updates of the register, incorporating notifications of alterations of interests and declarations of interests, were prepared by the secretariat and tabled on 2 December 2003 and 22 June 2004. Updates to the register of departmental Senior Executive Service officers were tabled on the same dates.
Declarations of gifts to the Senate or the Parliament are rare. The committee received only one such declaration during 2003–04, the first for some years, and at the end of the year was considering the disposition of the gift, as required by the relevant resolution, in preparation for making a recommendation to the President of the Senate.
Procedural information
Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice, the main vehicle for procedural information, was updated by a supplement at six‑monthly intervals. A new printed edition, incorporating the supplements, will be prepared at the end of the current Parliament, due to occur during the next financial year.
After each sitting fortnight and each of the three sets of estimates hearings held during the year, the Clerk also produced issues of the Procedural Information Bulletin which identified and analysed matters of significant procedural interest that arose during those times. In addition to these documents, the Clerk continued to produce publications on procedure in various forums.
The acting Deputy Clerk prepared papers and, in February 2004, revised both the Senators’ Guide to Procedures and an internal training manual for clerks at the table. The release of the revised manual was complemented by a training session in the chamber.
Both officers continued to support, devise and participate in seminars on parliamentary matters. More information on such activities is provided in Appendix 5.
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 next in early 2005. As reported last year, the previous survey did not suggest any areas of major concern.
In the absence of a formal survey this year, one useful measure of satisfaction is the extent to which senators and others who have sought advice in the past regularly returned for advice on other topics.
A high level of demand for advice to committees was a feature in 2003–04. Periods of strong demand coincided particularly with the additional estimates and budget estimates hearings in February and May–June 2004, at which numerous procedural issues arose in relation to the powers of committees to call for witnesses and documents, and the roles of committee chairs. Several complex committee inquiries also drew on advice from the Clerk’s Office.
Advice from the Clerk’s Office also continued to be sought by senators and their staff, and by a range of other persons and organisations, including representatives of the Australian Public Service, the press, lobby groups and other legislatures. Their continuing recourse to the intellectual resources of the Clerk’s Office was a good indicator of its efficacy and efficiency.
Significant changes in functions and services
There were no significant changes in functions and services during the year.
Factors, events and trends influencing performance
As in recent years, the concentrated sitting pattern continued to influence performance by creating periods of peak demand. In addition, committees of all types were particularly active, and many advices provided by the Clerk’s Office in 2003–04 related to committee operations.
Figure 4 shows the longer-term trend for the provision of written advice. Reasons for the gradual decline in the demand for written advices in previous years have been discussed in previous annual reports. They range from ready access, including on‑line access, to other up‑to‑date procedural resources that provide answers to senators’ questions, to reduced numbers of sitting days.
The significant reversal of the trend in the current reporting period may be attributable to a number of factors, including the accountability activities of committees, the return to a more normal number of sitting days, the debate on proposals for Senate ‘reform’, and the stage reached in the electoral cycle.
Figure 4 Trends in the provision of advice by the Clerk’s Office
Visits by the presidents of the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China in October 2003 had an impact on the work of the office, in that events at the joint meetings held to receive addresses from the two presidents gave rise to references to both the Procedure Committee and the Committee of Privileges.
In his administrative role, the Clerk, together with senior managers, spent considerable time advising the President and the Appropriations and Staffing Committee on budget issues, and on the administrative arrangements underpinning the transfer of security funding to the Department of Parliamentary Services, which was the subject of that committee’s fortieth report(discussed further in the Clerk’s review and in the reports on performance for Outcome 1 and Output Group 5).
Performance outlook
The Clerk’s Office will prepare for the expected election period and subsequent meeting of a new parliament by reviewing procedural publications and preparing for press the eleventh edition of Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice. Planning of the next orientation program will commence in anticipation of a significant intake of new senators from 1 July 2005. The 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.
