Motions

Parliamentary Committee System

The Hon. C. BONAROS (16:44): I move:

1. That in the opinion of this council, a joint committee be appointed to inquire into and report on the effectiveness of the current system of parliamentary committees in supporting the role and functions of the South Australian parliament;

2. That, in the event of a joint committee being appointed, the Legislative Council be represented thereon by three members, of whom two shall form a quorum of council members necessary to be present at all sittings of the committee;

3. That this council permits the joint committee to authorise the disclosure or publication, as it thinks fit, of any evidence or documents presented to the committee prior to such evidence being reported to the council;

4. That standing order 396 be suspended as to enable strangers to be admitted when the joint committee is examining witnesses, unless the committee otherwise resolves, but they shall be excluded when the committee is deliberating; and

5. That a message be sent to the House of Assembly transmitting the foregoing resolution and requesting its concurrence thereto.

This motion creates a joint committee to examine and report on the effectiveness of the existing committee structures that operate within the South Australian parliament in supporting the work that we do. In doing so—should the motion, of course, be successful—it is hoped that recommendations will be made that improve the current processes and structures that surround and support the committee structure. This in turn, it is also hoped, will lead to a more fluid framework and improved engagement by South Australians with the democratic process and the examination of legislation they are governed by and the issues affecting them.

The motion was born from the frustration of the ever-growing number of select committees currently impacting the resourcing of this chamber. I will note for the record that select committees are an extraordinarily important tool in the toolkits of the crossbench in particular, so I cannot emphasise enough the importance with which we rely on this select committee process, but, again, it is one that is becoming strained. We have seven select committees currently in play since the 54^th parliament commenced a year ago, and we are likely to have an eighth by the end of today when we vote on the Hon. Clare Scriven's motion to establish a select committee into the timber industry.

As I said, we are only one year into the parliamentary session. By comparison, in its 57^th parliamentary session the New South Wales parliament dealt with a total of eight select committees over four years. One of the limitations of our committee structure is the inability to accommodate participating members, with the Budget and Finance Committee an exception. By contrast, the federal Senate allows for participating members to its standing committees and has done so certainly since I can remember.

The result of this limitation in the South Australian parliament's current committee structure is that should a member want a particular issue examined and they are not represented on one of the existing standing committees, they are forced to move to establish a select committee to ensure that they will be included in the process. This limitation is acutely felt by the crossbench who are much fewer in number and consequently are spread thinly across the existing standing committees or, indeed, in some cases are not represented on them at all.

It is also felt acutely by our committee staff and their secretariats and we only have three assisting clerks in our chamber, so I do not underestimate the pressure they are under in terms of the growing number of select committees. I think we all appreciate that there are only so many committees they can serve on. We also have standing committees that are understaffed or under-resourced and it is of no help if they are left effectively competing for resources.

There is no doubt about the importance of committees in highlighting issues and making recommendations that will ultimately lead to legislative change to the benefit of South Australians. As I have already alluded to, it is absolutely critical to the work that we do. That said, there is no doubt that our committee structure is in need of improvement and could be doing so much more, particularly in the area of the scrutiny of legislation that comes before us.

Parliamentary committees are a common feature of the Westminster system, the basis of our system of government, and have dated as far back as the 16^th century in Britain. Committees promote political accountability through supporting the concept of responsible government by providing an appropriate environment for parliaments to be held accountable to the very people who elect them. In that regard, it can be argued that committees are, for the main, concerned with safeguarding the public interest.

Committees also represent an opportunity for members to set aside their partisan views and work collectively as a nonpartisan group, listening to the public, community groups and peak bodies when reviewing and assessing government initiatives, programs and legislation. A couple of recent examples highlight this point and illustrate the need for better, more rigorous and more open scrutiny of government.

Yesterday, together with a number of other honourable members, I attended a roundtable discussion chaired by Ross Womersley of SACOSS concerning the Health Care (Governance) Amendment Bill 2019 and attended by key stakeholders in the health sector, including the AMA(SA), the Health Consumers Alliance of SA, the SA Network of Drug and Alcohol Services and the Mental Health Coalition, among others.

The meeting was—and I mean this in the most respectful manner—somewhat hastily organised due to the bill being listed as the first priority on the government's legislative agenda for the sitting week. During the round table it was revealed that there was a very small window of opportunity between the close of the consultation period and the date for closing of submissions.

When you take into account that consideration of the bill would have had to pass through the cabinet process some time earlier, it begs the question of whether the consultation period for the stakeholders was genuine and whether any of the concerns raised by stakeholders were not only listened to but indeed incorporated into the bill itself. In addition, the submissions provided by key stakeholders to the bill, including the AMA(SA) and others, were not provided to members until Monday and not until the urging of at least my office, despite many of those submissions being dated 30 April 2019.

This does not augur well for the accountability and transparency of government. Only this month, Dr Sarah Moulds, lecturer in law at the University of South Australia, and Dr Laura Grenfell, associate professor in law at the University of Adelaide, published an article in the Law Society flagship journal TheBulletin in relation to the issue of the South Australian parliament's ad hoc approach to the scrutiny of bills, with a focus on individual and human rights and with specific reference to the youth treatment orders bill. The article says, and I quote:

South Australia has no formalised parliamentary system of rights scrutiny for bills. Instead it relies on an ad hoc system of external rights scrutiny, often undertaken by bodies like the Law Society.

While these bodies can produce thoughtful, persuasive submissions, the impact of such extra-parliamentary scrutiny can be limited by political factors and particularly by timing.

This means that the community more broadly is often shut out of the law-making process or left wondering how to best draw parliament's attention to problematic law.

The lack of a scrutiny of bills committee, or indeed a human rights committee, to offer a technical analysis of a bill and their rights impact was starkly contrasted with the outcome at a federal level or in other states and territories with scrutiny of bills committees, namely, Victoria, NSW, Queensland and the ACT.

Bills in those jurisdictions would be assessed, for example, as to whether a bill unduly trespasses on personal rights and liberties; whether a bill makes rights, liberties or obligations unduly dependent on insufficiently defined administrative powers; whether any delegation of legislative powers is inappropriate; or whether the exercise of legislative power is subject to sufficient parliamentary scrutiny.

It is unacceptable that in the absence of an intraparliamentary focal point we are instead reliant on the extraparliamentary scrutiny of the bills scattered amongst various government ministers or communicated via media releases. The result is that any scrutiny information is not easily accessible either to us as lawmakers or indeed, and perhaps more importantly, to the broader community. In order to strengthen our lawmaking process, careful scrutiny of legislative provisions must take place.

A review of committees is not new. The New South Wales government examined its committee structure, focusing on the Legislative Council, with a process started in 2015 with a discussion paper which was followed by the establishment of a select committee into committees in 2016. A number of recommendations were made, including the successful trial of a Selection of Bills Committee.

It is time for the South Australian parliament collectively, I believe, to look at our system of committees with a view to making recommendations that will lead to substantive changes for the betterment of the parliamentary process and the democratic engagement of South Australians with us. This motion represents an opportunity to reflect on the current structures that underpin our committees, as well as to look to the future to provide recommendations for genuine and practical changes to the committee structure more reflective and responsive to a modern parliament.

At this point, I would like to take this opportunity to thank our Clerk for his advice and assistance with the preparation of this motion. With those words, I commend the motion to the chamber.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. T.J. Stephens.