Overview
The Table Office is led by the Clerk Assistant (Table) and has three functional areas, as shown in figure 6.
The Table Office provided support for the Senate on each of its 59 sitting days in this reporting period – a slight increase on the 56 sitting days last year. All performance results, as outlined in the table on page 35, were achieved within established timeframes. Project work was completed or has continued, as forecast.
Much of the work of the Table Office involves direct contact with senators and their staff, as well as other clients. This presents an ongoing opportunity to receive and respond to feedback about the services provided by the office. Ad hoc feedback received during the year from senators, their staff and others was almost invariably positive. Formal surveys of satisfaction levels are undertaken at regular intervals, with the next proposed to be undertaken in 2026–27.
Staff numbers remained steady during the reporting period, with an average full-time equivalent level of 14.1. The cost of the office was $2.2m ($2.1m in 2022–23).
Programming and procedural support
The Table Office supported the operation of the Senate by providing programming support, preparing procedural scripts for use in the chamber (1,281 in 2023–24, averaging 22 per sitting day) and providing a broadcast captioning service of Senate proceedings. The Order of Business (the program for each day's sitting) was prepared in draft form to assist senators (especially the whips) and published as a final edition prior to each sitting.
The Clerk Assistant (Table) and other staff of the office provided procedural advice to government office holders in relation to programming and the management of government business in the Senate, and also worked closely with the Parliamentary Liaison Officer (Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet) to facilitate government business in the Senate.
Formal records
The Notice Paper is the formal agenda of the Senate. The Notice Paper was produced and published by the Table Office in advance of each sitting day. The Senate Journals is the official record of decisions made by the Senate. Proof Senate Journals were published online shortly after the end of each sitting day, and printed versions distributed the next morning. Final Senate Journals were subsequently produced following thorough checking of source materials.
Legislation
The office facilitated the legislative work of the Parliament by processing all bills considered in the Senate, preparing legislative documents including third reading and assent prints of bills passed, and processing assent messages.
The office also prepared the formal messages by which the two Houses communicate on legislative and other activity. In 2023–24, 157 messages were prepared, of which 137 related to the passage of bills (the remaining related to matters such as committee memberships). These figures compare to 156 messages, of which 116 related to the passage of bills, in 2022–23. Figure 7 reflects the level of legislative activity in recent years.
Figure 7 – Senate legislative activity, 2020–21 to 2023–24
In addition, the office provided administrative and procedural support in relation to the division of two government bills, the first such instances since 2002.
Questions on notice, notices of motion, petitions and orders for documents
Senators continued to use the questions on notice process – written questions to ministers on the administration of public policy – as an important accountability mechanism. Throughout the reporting period, 1,275 questions were asked on notice. These, along with answers to questions received from government departments, were processed and published to a searchable database on the Parliament's website within established timeframes.
In 2023–24, the office processed all notices of motion received for inclusion in the Notice Paper – 435 for this reporting period compared to 386 in the previous period. These notices signal senators' intentions to move particular motions on specified days. The office also processed five petitions which senators had lodged for presentation to the Senate (compared to three petitions in 2022–23).
Another frequently used means of obtaining information about matters of concern to the Senate are orders for documents. When an order for documents is agreed to, the office communicates the order to the relevant minister, and subsequently processes documents tabled in response to the order. During 2023–24, the office processed 118 orders for documents agreed to by the Senate, compared to 105 and 51 in the previous two years, respectively. This demonstrates a trend of increasing numbers of orders for documents being agreed to.
Documents
The office received and processed 4,755 documents presented (or tabled) in the Senate in the reporting period, recorded their details in the Senate Journals, and archived them. This figure is a slight decrease on the 5,380 documents tabled in the previous period. Figure 8 shows the number of documents tabled in the Senate in recent years.
All documents presented to the Senate in the reporting period were digitised and made publicly available on the Parliament's website, except for those documents already made available on the Federal Register of Legislation by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel.
Significant work continues to be undertaken to organise and rationalise the office's holdings of hard copy materials to ensure the preservation of historically important material and the efficient use of the office's document storage areas. A new website to facilitate the receipt and publication of documents electronically was also implemented.
Figure 8 – Documents tabled in the Senate, 2020–21 to 2023–24
Support for committees
During the year, the office provided secretariat support to three committees.
All committee meetings were convened, papers prepared (including draft reports as required) and other administrative support provided within the timeframes required by the committees.
The Clerk Assistant (Table) is secretary to the Selection of Bills Committee which meets and reports each sitting week on recommendations to refer bills to the legislation committees for inquiry. He is also secretary to the Senators' Interests Committee and is the Registrar of Senators' Interests, with responsibility for, among other things, administering the Register of Senators' Interests and the Register of Senators' Qualifications, both of which are published online.
In addition, the Table Office provided secretariat support to the Senate Publications Committee.
Records management
The Table Office is also responsible for the administration of departmental records and the department's information management system. During the reporting period, the Records Management Unit continued to provide induction training for new staff on recordkeeping obligations, and undertook work to facilitate a move to electronic tabling of records associated with committee inquiries.
Performance outlook
In 2024–25, the Table Office will continue to serve as the secretariat to the Senate, and to certain committees.
The existing timeframes set for the provision of various services remain appropriate. The office will continue to monitor its performance through the collation of a range of statistics and feedback and exception-based reporting of non-compliance.
During the next reporting period, the Online Tabled Documents system will be rolled out to government departments as the sole method of receiving tabled documents in a digital format. This promises significant efficiencies, and the Table Office will provide support to departments in the roll-out period.
The office will continue to support various ICT-related activities, including contributing to the ongoing maintenance, enhancement and testing of existing systems that support the work of the office and the Senate. Work will also commence on modernising parliamentary business systems, many of which will assist the office in the provision of secretariat support to the Senate, including the production and publication of key procedural information. The Table Office will play a key role in the development of these systems, with a view to improving accessibility of key Senate information and further reducing cost associated with printing of documents.
The key staffing focus for the next reporting period remains the sharing of skills and knowledge to ensure sufficient back-up is available to fill in for staff who are on leave, as well as bringing in staff from other areas of the department from time to time, to ensure that expertise in relation to specific tasks is not unduly concentrated. Further work will be undertaken to enhance the support provided by the office in relation to the Department's recordkeeping function.