House of Representatives Annual Report 2002-03

Annual Report 2002–03

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Output Group 2: Committee Services and Parliamentary Relations

2.2 Inquiry facilitation

Providing procedural, research, analytical and administrative support for the conduct of inquiries and the publication of the final reports

Members' satisfaction

Secretaries reported that oral feedback received from members remained very positive, and members frequently thanked secretaries and staff in statements to the House. As one committee member put it:

I also thank the committee secretariat. Quite often, people forget the enormous amount of work that is put in by the secretariat and they did a great job in collating this report.
House of Representatives Hansard, 14 November 2002, p. 9190

Reports and responses

During the reporting period, the 22 scrutiny committees supported by the department tabled 34 reports, containing a total of 260 recommendations.

At the end of June 2003, the Government had yet to respond to 19 of the total number of reports tabled in 2002–03, but the three three-month target time for government responses had not expired in respect of six of these reports. A summary of committee performance figures is provided in Appendix 1.

Two reports that generated particularly widespread comment during 2002–03 were Boys: Getting it right, a report by the House Standing Committee on Education and Training, which was tabled in the House on 21 October 2002; and Human cloning: scientific, ethical and regulatory aspects of human cloning and stem cell research, tabled on 20 September 2001 by the House Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs.

Boys: Getting it right detailed the findings of an inquiry into the education of boys. The inquiry, notable for both its length and its scope, began in March 2000. Over two years, the committee involved some 21 members of the House, received 231 written submissions and heard evidence from 235 witnesses. The report, which made 24 recommendations supported unanimously by the committee, generated much discussion in the Chamber and the Main Committee, and was the subject of a great deal of public and press attention.

The report Human cloning: scientific, ethical and regulatory aspects of human cloning and stem cell research was not tabled during the reporting period. However, it contributed considerably to debates held during the latter part of 2002 on the Prohibition of Human Cloning Bill 2002 and the Research Involving Embryos Bill 2002. The bills resulted from an agreement reached by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) in April 2002 to implement nationally consistent legislation in the areas of human cloning and stem cell research. The COAG agreement had been based largely on the findings in the report.

Select Committee on the Recent Australian Bushfires

The workload of the Committee Office was increased during the reporting year by the establishment of the Select Committee on the Recent Australian Bushfires, bringing the total number of committees supported to 22. Existing departmental personnel were redeployed to support the new committee.

This select committee, established in response to the bushfires that devastated large parts of south-eastern Australia in early 2003, was the first select committee to be established by the House during this Parliament. At the end of the reporting period the inquiry had generated over 300 submissions, demonstrating the level of community concern surrounding the issue. The committee is required to report its findings by 6 November 2003.

Public participation

All investigative committees aimed to become better informed about community concerns and attitudes with regard to the issues under examination. To this end, secretariats sought to facilitate and increase public participation in committee inquiries and solicited input from members of the general public and expert witnesses. This required the coordination of advertising for inquiries, assisted by the department's community outreach and media body, the Liaison and Projects Office, and the organisation of public hearings, seminars, workshops, forums, and surveys. These activities were conducted using a variety of media (see Output Group 1 for more information on initiatives in advertising).

The Committee Office used some innovative methods to increase public participation in inquiries. One such method involved round table hearings where committee members were placed among the public participants to promote free-flowing discussion. Another method involved questionnaires to canvass opinions on particular issues, the responses to which could be returned by email, fax or post. The Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories utilised the immediacy and reach of a televised hearing to good effect by soliciting, during a hearing, email responses to a series of questions on how viewers in the Parliamentary Triangle had travelled to work that morning. This survey generated over 450 responses, giving the committee a useful 'snapshot' of the transport situation on that day.

Secretaries reported that witnesses appearing before committees were grateful for the opportunity to present their views to the Parliament. In a letter to the Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, one witness thanked members and staff for providing a 'fantastic and all-inclusive opportunity' for participants to express their views. Witnesses also personally thanked secretariat staff for helping them through the sometimes confusing and intimidating process of presenting evidence.

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