2
The beauty of Senate estimates is that it sheds light on government administration, but it can also remind those questioning bureaucrats, and the rest of us, that even the estimates process has limits.
One of them emerged yesterday like a periscope out of water when Senator Jane Hume asked the Department of Parliamentary Services why the Department of the House of Representativeswas running seminars at a $350 fee on how the House works when the information was freely available online.
Hume’s central point was fairly clear and reasonable. She thought the ticket price was a bit steep for material that anyone who can commandeer a digital device like an iPhone, an Android tablet, or a desktop computer can access for nothing.
Was anybody, Hume asked, concerned about the ethics of charging for a seminar that covered information that the parliament already provides on its website?
She very quickly found that line of questioning went nowhere. Dead end. Nothing.
The reason for this is that the appearances of bureaucrats at Senate estimates for parliamentary departments cover the Department of the Senate, the Parliamentary Budget Office, and the Department of Parliamentary Services — there is no provision for the Department of the House of Representatives to appear at Senate estimates. Because, you know, it’s in the name.
Hume had hoped that DPS would be able to provide an answer because it handled catering and a range of other functions across parliament, but she was told to write a letter to the House of Representatives folks to get her answer.
That suggestion to write a letter to another department — the one that looks after a larger number of parliamentarians — may be viewed as a convenient fob-off by some observers, but it is an instructive response.
That’s because it points to a problem that the parliament needs to address: the Department of the House of Representatives does not have an estimates equivalent during which questions about its operations can be tackled in person.
That may require the presiding officers of both chambers, Speaker Milton Dick and President Sue Lines, to contemplate how all parliamentary departments are held equally to account.
One of the options Dick and Lines should entertain is the establishment of an appropriate parliamentary joint committee to hold all parliamentary departments to account.
That would mean there would be an equivalent level of scrutiny for all parliamentary departments across the House of Representatives and the Senate.
It would also open up the opportunity for proper accountability for the DPS, the Department of the Senate, and the PBO.
The DPS is the largest of parliamentary departments, and it should be the subject of a day-long oversight hearing that looks at all departments and divisions operating under DPS.
Senate estimates offers only limited time for these departments that serve our democratic institutions to be subject to questioning, and a new joint committee would remove that pebble from everybody’s shoe.
