After a couple of years of disruption, there was a much more business-as-usual narrative to our work during 2022–23, albeit complicated by the continuing effects of COVID-19. The Senate department undertook a range of activities associated with a new Parliament, the arrival of newly-elected senators and the election of a new Government. We continued to support elevated levels of legislative and committee activity, and saw an increase in demand for legislative drafting. A number of important ICT projects were delivered during the year, making some of our core tasks more efficient and enhancing the availability of tabled documents and other parliamentary information. At the same time, information and education programs returned to a more normal footing, with increased in-person attendance. These activities are described throughout this report.
Legislative and committee activity
The focus of this review is on the entrenched level of demand for the advice and support we provide to senators in the context of their legislative and committee work. The department provides the secretariat for the Senate and for dozens of parliamentary committees. We arrange their meetings, facilitate their work and report their outcomes. Our core services are described in terms of advice and support. We succeed in our work when the Senate and its committees can meet in accordance with their own decisions, and when senators and others have the advice and support they require to participate in and shape those meetings. We also advise senators on other matters affecting the operation of the Parliament and its committees, and provide administrative advice and support to senators and their staff, particularly in Parliament House. More broadly, we seek to explain the role and work of the Senate, including through public information and education programs.
Many of these activities carry with them the challenges of managing unpredictable workloads and deadlines. Our work is substantially driven by the requirements of the Senate and senators themselves. This brings into focus the two main factors influencing our work: the electoral cycle and the political dynamics of the Senate.
Our corporate plans focus on the year ahead but gaze out over four years. This brings the ebb and flow of the electoral cycle into consideration. An election year typically involves a lull in legislative and committee activity; the next year sees that activity ramp up, and this is generally sustained through the following year.
The year just past – the first year of the 47th Parliament – followed that pattern. The downturn in activity associated with the election occurred in the previous reporting period, with the new Parliament meeting for the first time in July 2022. In that month the department arranged and presented an orientation program for new senators, and worked with our colleagues across the parliament to deliver the Opening of Parliament, on 26 July 2022. This is a large logistical exercise, for which the Black Rod’s Office has particular responsibility. In the sittings that followed, committee activity quickly reached the elevated levels seen in recent years and legislative activity increased in line with the number of sitting days.
Beyond the electoral cycle, our work and workload is largely determined by senators themselves, through the decisions they make – individually and collectively – in relation to their legislative and committee work.
In relation to legislative activity, the Senate sets its own schedule of sittings, which affects the level of demand for procedural advice. The demand for legislative drafting support depends on the scope of the government’s legislative program and the extent to which non-government senators seek our assistance in drafting amendments and private senators’ bills. The past year has shown how the political composition of the Senate can influence the level of demand. Compared with the previous parliament, the Senate has fewer government senators, more opposition senators and a larger, more diverse crossbench. Having more, and more diverse, party groupings and independent senators typically increases the demand for procedural advice and support, and for assistance in drafting legislative amendments and private senators’ bills.
Because of the electoral cycle, it can be useful to look at indicators of activity from one Parliament to the next, rather than simply year-on-year. Levels of legislative activity in the past year were broadly comparable with those in the first year of the previous parliament. For example, there were 56 sitting days in 2022–23, compared with 58 days in the first year of the 46th Parliament (2019–20), necessitating the usual levels of procedural advice and support from the Table Office (for the President, government senators and committee chairs) and the Procedure Office (for non-government senators). The Table Office and Senate Public Information Office also produced a suite of formal documents and informal guides in support of those sittings.
The Senate passed fewer bills – 114 compared with 153 in 2019–20 – and amended around the same number (32 compared with 30). However, there was a much higher level of demand for the legislative drafting work undertaken by Procedure Office staff, which is one of our more specialised and labour-intensive services.
In all, 228 sheets of amendments (comprising almost 750 amendments) were drafted and circulated during the reporting period, compared with 170 sheets (608 amendments) in the first year of the previous parliament. Typically the office also draft around a third as many additional amendments, which do not ultimately proceed to the Senate. Slightly fewer private senators’ bills were introduced in 2022–23: 26 compared with 32 in 2019–20. However, the demand for drafting was considerably higher, with the office receiving requests for 63 bills, compared with 48 in the first year of the previous parliament and only 26 requests in 2021–22. While the department has taken steps to bring more resources to bear on legislative drafting services, it can be difficult to meet the elevated demand for private senators’ bills, and priority has to be given to drafting amendments to bills before the Senate.
These political dynamics of the Senate can also be seen in relation to committee activity. The Senate delegates to its network of committees a range of scrutiny, accountability and investigative functions. Senators collectively determine the number of operative committees and the nature of their inquiries, in turn driving demand for the advice, administrative support, research and writing undertaken by our committee staff.
The department is resourced to support an array of Senate standing committees and joint standing or statutory committees. On top of this, it has been common for the Senate or the Houses together to establish a small number of select committees; committees appointed for particular tasks, but outside of the established committee system. Record numbers of select and joint select committees were established during the previous parliament, and eight (six Senate and two joint) were established during 2022–23.
The Senate Appropriations, Staffing and Security Committee recognised that recent elevated levels of committee activity have become entrenched, endorsing the President’s bid for additional funds for committee support. In the Budget in May this year the government accepted that position, providing ongoing supplementation in the order of $2.2 million. This effectively returns the department’s budget to the funding levels that applied in the previous parliament, as a result of short-term supplementation.
In 2022–23, Committee Office staff supported 29 distinct committees, including six Senate select committees and two joint select committees. They processed almost 12,000 submissions, arranged 256 public hearings and 508 private meetings, and drafted around 120 reports. Our narrative around committee activity tends to focus on secretariats in the Committee Office, although staff in other offices also undertake committee work. For instance, staff in the Procedure Office supported the Parliament’s three legislative scrutiny committees, assisting their examination of around 200 bills and 2,000 items of delegated legislation, and drafting a further 35 reports.
These remain impressive statistics, reflecting continued high levels of demand for secretariat support. The annual performance statements beginning on page 15 demonstrate that advice, documentation and draft reports consistently met committees’ requirements, while feedback from committee chairs and members show high levels of satisfaction throughout.
More broadly, those statements describe the criteria by which we measure our success in service delivery, with a focus on accuracy, timeliness and the satisfaction of senators, and outline the formal and informal means of assessing those criteria. These include a rolling series of surveys across different areas of service delivery and activity, which continue to show high levels of satisfaction.
In last year’s review I noted that Governments at all levels were unwinding the public health measures associated with the pandemic. For much of 2021–22 we continued arrangements for staff to work from home, particularly as senators came to Canberra for sitting periods, while committees and the Senate itself sat in hybrid modes with senators and witnesses frequently participating by videoconference.
For the most part, such measures fell away during 2022–23, although the incidence of COVID-19 cases continued to affect our staff and our operations. The Opening of Parliament was a slimmed-down affair, with a very restricted list of guests allowing most members to attend in the Senate’s galleries, rather than crowding onto the Senate floor. The system for ‘remote participation’ in the sittings of the Senate has not been used during the new parliament, while the widespread practice of wearing face masks did not continue beyond the first sitting fortnight. Senators and witnesses continue to participate in committee hearings by video, although not to nearly the extent they did in the previous year.
Post-pandemic, logistics for committee hearings – particularly for arranging and managing interstate hearings – have become more complex, necessitating additional administrative work and contingencies (for example, to adapt to the increasing incidence of cancelled flights).
Throughout the year we have also continued to support the implementation of the recommendations of Set the Standard, the report of the Independent Review into Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces. Implementation is being driven by a leadership taskforce, comprising eight members and senators drawn from around the Parliament and an independent chair, which was re-established early in the new parliament. We continue to engage with the work of the taskforce through different working groups and leaders forums. The taskforce continues to provide regular updates on its work.
The majority of the report’s recommendations sit somewhat apart from our own administrative responsibilities, as they are chiefly directed to improving employment arrangements for political staff and shifting the political culture of the parliament. However, we have been happy to work with colleagues from across and outside of the parliament to enhance the working environment for our staff and those they work with. A key change over the year has included folding the leadership of the new Parliamentary Workplace Support Service (PWSS) into the broader parliamentary administration. We expect that this will be formalised in the near future. We also expect to work with the PWSS to expand our reporting on gender equality, diversity and inclusion over the next two reporting periods.
Looking ahead
All indications are that the elevated levels of demand for our services experienced in the first year of the 47th Parliament will be sustained into the next. In looking ahead, it makes sense to borrow from our Corporate Plan for 2023–24.
A key task over coming months will be the negotiation of a new enterprise agreement for staff. The government’s bargaining framework for non-APS agencies requires the department to have regard to the common terms and conditions that emerge from the APS service-wide bargaining round that is currently on foot. I expect that a key feature of our bargaining process will be determining how to apply those conditions within our environment. As this is the first full bargaining round for many years, I expect that bargaining representatives will also bring their own ideas to the table. One of our aims throughout the process will be to ensure that the department’s new agreement supports our capacity to attract and retain high performing staff.
Following adoption of an updated policy on diversity and inclusion, we will continue work to develop and implement our new diversity and inclusion action plan. We’ll also continue to work with our colleagues across the Parliamentary Service to implement recommendations of the Set the Standard report. This will include working closely with the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service as it expands its operations.
We are also planning to participate this year in the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) census, having adopted the approach of taking part every second year. In doing so we will be hoping to replicate the gratifying results from the 2022 census, which reflected a high performing, engaged and motivated workforce, with great clarity about their duties and responsibilities.
The next four years promise to be a period of continuing challenge in terms of consistent high demand for the services the department provides. Meeting that challenge will involve maintaining institutional capability by ensuring the department attracts, develops and retains staff from the broadest possible talent pool. It also presents particular opportunities to assure the department’s future capability by enhancing the diversity of our staff and ensuring we foster an environment where all staff can best contribute to our work providing the Senate, its committees and senators with advice and support.