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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-09-22 Daily Xml
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Parliamentary Committees

Select Committee on the Effectiveness of the Current System of Parliamentary Committees

The Hon. C. BONAROS (16:28): I move:

That the report of the select committee be noted.

As I said at the time of moving to establish this committee, it was born from frustration: frustration at the ever-growing number of select committees impacting the resourcing of this chamber, frustration at the lack of scrutiny of bills or a human rights committee to offer a technical analysis of a bill and the impacts on rights, frustration that members are being stretched across many committees while trying to keep up with their parliamentary and electorate work, frustration that our committee structure and system has an overabundance of committees performing overlapping roles and frustration that staff of those committees are being overstretched and overrun in terms of their commitments.

There is no doubt about the importance of committees in highlighting issues and making recommendations that ultimately lead to legislative change for the benefit of South Australia. In that context they are an important tool in the toolkit, especially for us crossbenchers, but we can certainly do better and must do better, which brings me to the committee's inquiry.

Following its establishment in November 2019, the committee received 12 written submissions from individuals and organisations. It heard public oral evidence from 11 witnesses, and in camera evidence as well as written responses were provided by the Clerks of the South Australian parliament, and four other Australian parliaments—namely, New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and the Senate. I thank the Clerks in this place and the Clerks of those other jurisdictions for their assistance with the committee's deliberations.

The committee met on 16 occasions to hear and consider submissions and deliberate on its report. I would like to take the opportunity now to thank the committee's secretary/researcher Ms Lisa Baxter, firstly for her patience and, of course, for her tireless efforts to see us through to this point. I am sure that I am not the only one in this place who considers Ms Baxter's work and attention to detail as extremely thorough, considered, concise, timely and, importantly, impartial. I am sure I speak for all committee members in acknowledging and thanking her for her hard work in this committee.

As detailed very extensively in the report, the committee found the ad hoc evolution of South Australian parliamentary committees is due for a major overhaul. The current system of establishing standing committees under legislation has made it difficult for changes or tweaks to be made in recent years. In the majority of other jurisdictions changes are more simply made under standing orders.

After consulting with other jurisdictions across Australia, this committee was particularly impressed with the committee systems in the Legislative Council in New South Wales, and elements from Queensland and Victoria. We noted that New South Wales and Queensland were the last two jurisdictions to formally review their committee systems and make subsequent changes, which have created much more effective and efficient mechanisms for executive accountability.

This committee agreed to a new system which incorporated portfolio-based standing committees in the Legislative Council in the expectation that this would decrease the number of select committees. It also recommended that two of the three new legislative committees, standing committees, including two of the portfolio committees, be chaired by non-government members along with a cap on the number of select committees in any one parliamentary session.

Current standing committees have also been merged, reducing the overlap of committee functions currently experienced in South Australian standing committees. The Budget and Finance Committee is also recommended to become a standing committee of the Legislative Council, ensuring the ongoing scrutiny work be performed by a standing public accounts committee.

The committee also recommended mechanisms that increase the flexibility afforded to members sitting on committees or for those members who may have an interest in an inquiry before a committee. These members, whilst not official members of those committees, should be afforded the opportunity to participate on those inquiries in line with what happens in other jurisdictions, without becoming full members of the committee and in line, of course, with the practice that has been adopted here with the Budget and Finance Committee.

The committee has recommended therefore the ability for members to participate in committees on an inquiry or hearing basis, as I said, as occurs in all other jurisdictions that the committee spoke with and is, again, currently the practice of the Budget and Finance Committee. The committee also suggested that it is time for this jurisdiction to come in line with all bicameral parliaments in mainland Australia in terms of the level of scrutiny of legislation being introduced to this parliament which necessitated a recommendation for a scrutiny of bills and delegated legislation committee to be established.

It also inquired into the scrutiny role of committees in other jurisdictions and compared with this current sole scrutiny committee of the South Australian parliament, namely, the Legislative Review Committee, the functions of this scrutiny committee have become clouded with other unrelated functions having been added to it in recent times, such as the function to report into eligible petitions, which I think we now acknowledge, given the increase in those petitions, could be better dealt with by committees which have more expertise in the areas of the petitions themselves.

We heard that the workload associated with this additional function has increased to an untenable level with that committee's limited resources and takes away the important scrutiny focus of that committee. It was also noted that the South Australian parliament stands as the only bicameral Australian mainland parliament without a scrutiny of bills legislation committee, and therefore the committee has included in its recommendations the added function of scrutinising bills to its workload.

There are a number of other recommendations and findings that have been made, but what I would like to point to particularly at this stage—and members will obviously have the benefit of reading the report that the committee has produced and I would urge them to do so and take on board the feedback that I think all members of this committee have benefited from—relates to the resourcing of the current committee structure compared to that which is undertaken in other jurisdictions, which is much more flexible in its approach, which has a pool of staff who are assigned to committees on a rotational basis and ensures that the workload of staff is evenly distributed.

I think it is very fair to say that even members of the committee were very sceptical as to the likelihood of members from across the political spectrum reaching a unanimous position in terms of some recommendations and findings on this committee, but I for one had faith that we could do just that, that we could find some common ground and that when we heard about the effectiveness of the structures that exist in those other jurisdictions we would be convinced about the need to look at better models and ways of doing things in South Australia.

That is not to say there has not been some give and take by all of us; there has, but overall I think the committee members approached this collaboratively and with a genuine will to sign off on a report that will ensure SA has a more effective and efficient committee structure, both in terms of its committee structure and, equally as importantly, in terms of the staffing arrangements that support those structures and do an inordinate amount of work to keep the wheels turning, to keep members abreast of all the issues that they need to know about and to churn out report after report in a very timely manner.

For those staff members who may be listening or may be interested to read in Hansard what it is that the committee has reported, I would urge them to actually look at the report as well but I would also say I do not think there is anything here that they need to be nervous about in terms of the recommendations that will be considered and the findings. I would like to assure them that this report is just as much about easing the burden on staff and creating a much more palatable staff structure as it is about addressing the workload for members in this place.

I would also like to note the importance of the select committees under the current structure—as I mentioned before, something that crossbenchers in particular in this place are particularly reliant upon—and the proposed structure in the report. We all know the importance of being able to establish select committees and, again, the crossbench is acutely aware of the importance of that function. We are not suggesting by any stretch that that be scrapped, and I cannot emphasise enough the importance of that structure in terms of accountability and transparency and shining a light on issues that we all know would otherwise not see the light of day.

That said, I remain confident that under the new proposed structures none of that will be lost. Indeed, it will be enhanced, it will be more effective and it will serve us as a parliament a lot better than the current structure has served us to date, specifically in terms of the ability of members to participate in committees rather than actually be members of those committees.

Mr President, you may know that in addition to having worked in this parliament as an adviser, I have also worked in the Senate as an adviser, and I can assure you that they have an extremely streamlined process in terms of their committee process. None of the issues that would ordinarily make their way into a select committee are lost, because there are mechanisms in place to ensure that they are still appropriately dealt with.

The make-up of those committees ensures that effectively issues are not shut down, and that is really what we are concerned about. We have had an explosion of select committees, and the reason behind that explosion of select committees speaks for itself. It is because we do not want our issue of inquiry to go to a government-led—and I mean this not disrespectfully, but whichever party happens to be in government at any given time, if they do have a government Chair and a casting vote, and members of the crossbench in particular are wanting to raise issues with those committees, then it is easy to see how those inquiries could be shut down. So select committees have become the norm, if you like, in terms of dealing with those inquiries. None of that will be lost under the proposal or the recommendations or the findings that are contained within this report. I think that is really important to stress.

I do not intend to talk too much to this, because I think members will have the opportunity to read the report themselves and to test everything that the committee has found. But I would like to stress again the amount of work that has gone into this report, the amount of collaboration that has gone into this amongst members from across the political spectrum. I would like to thank all the members of the committee and I will just name them for the record: the Hon. Tammy Franks, the Hon. Irene Pnevmatikos, the Hon. Justin Hanson, the Hon. Terry Stephens, and the Treasurer, the Hon. Rob Lucas, and I of course was also on the committee. If anyone in this place thought you would see something unanimous come out of that lot of names, well here it is.

So with those words, I would like to thank all members for keeping an open mind, for their cooperation, for their partisan approach to this issue and again for coming up with what I consider to be very reasonable and sensible reforms that would drastically reform the committee structure of this place and bring us into line with the modern day world of the other jurisdictions. With those words, I commend the report to the chamber.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. D.G.E. Hood.

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