Estimates of government expenditure are referred to Senate committees as part of the annual budget cycle.This opportunity to examine the operations of government plays a key role in the parliamentary scrutiny of the executive. Quick Links: aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/senate_estimates
Dr Ian Watt documented KPMG Australia’s various sins already aired publicly, and he concluded that KPMG Australia should not be sent to some consultant’s equivalent of Siberia for past misconduct by audit partners.
Watt recommends a similar pattern of activity to that which took place when PwC Australia was pinged by the Tax Practitioners Board for its historical breach of confidentiality agreements.
Finance has extended the firm’s ban — a restriction on bidding for new work — until the end of February, but that will make the Greens see red. Senator Barbara Pocock will have her list of questions on the KPMG saga at the ready.
Her numerous media releases over the past four months relating to the firm’s contract variations have telegraphed where her line of questioning of bureaucrats will head throughout the next week.
The Watt review and many other KPMG Australia reviews will provide Pocock and her colleagues with additional insight because the firm’s public release of documents will confirm to Pocock and fellow Senate interrogators Deborah O’Neill and Paul Scarr that reforms in the accounting sector and whistleblower laws should be made a high priority.
Those three parliamentarians will approach things with degrees of nuance, but they are all agreed on one thing: the accounting profession needs to be better regulated, better monitored, and have stronger penalties for misconduct so the firms and their staff are gently encourage to focus on the public interest in addition to profit generation.
Wait until multiple questions from all directions — not just from Pocock — get asked during economics committee estimates, given that the Treasury, Australian Securities and Investments Commission, and the Tax Practitioners Board have KPMG-related issues in their work in progress.
Treasury is in the middle of working through responses to its options paper on accounting profession reform.
Senators will be anxious to understand where that reform process is at and whether there is any chance of getting much in the way of change within the next 12 months.
ASIC executives will need to have their cheat notes ready when it comes to explaining how they are progressing with the investigations into KPMG Australia. These include investigations into auditors involved in the various confidentiality breaches that have been at the centre of political and media discourse since March this year.
The Tax Practitioners Board will also face questioning on what remains of its PwC Australia investigations as well as what, if anything, the tax agent regulator has managed to excavate from its dig into KPMG Australia.
Treasury will also need to expect questions on the issue of increased reporting thresholds for private companies because there is an active debate within the business community on whether scope three emissions reports under sustainability reporting rules actually provides any benefit whatsoever.
The thresholds for reporting for private companies have historically been a thorny issue — increasing them has been an arbitrary exercise by public servants — so expect Treasury to cop any number of ‘please explain’ questions.
There is also bound to be a truckload of questions for the Australian Taxation Office where the credit card ban decision is concerned.
ATO officials will be unable to dodge queries related to those matters, and senators of all stripes will be ready for ministerial deflections that point to the prime minister and treasurer having delayed implementation of a ban.
All that is left for people across Canberra and elsewhere watching the livestream is to stock up on microwave popcorn and their favourite soft drink, and watch to see whether anybody actually bothers to turn down the heat of the debate.
The new KPI for public servants: Avoiding a viral Senate moment
Since 1970, Senate estimates hearings have exposed and explored political scandals and governance failures, from the loans affair in the Whitlam era to the children overboard saga during the Howard years and, more recently, robo-debt.
(Dr Russell Cope’s fearless parliamentary colleague) the late Harry Evans was the clerk of the Senate between 1988 and 2009. He described Senate estimates as a general inquisition into the operations of government, saying:
“The ultimate safeguard against the misuse of power by a government is the ability of its opponents and rivals to find out about, and draw attention to, its mistakes and misdeeds. Accountability is not a refined process which operates on an elevated plane, above sordid politics. Accountability operates down in the swamp of politics, amongst the crocodiles and mosquitoes. The political wetlands sustain our cultural life and biodiversity; without them the desert of despotism assumes the landscape.”
Treasury secretary Jenny Wilkinson during a Senate estimates hearing at Parliament House in Canberra. Alex Ellinghausen
There are eight Senate estimates committees that meet three times a year. Each committee has four days to conduct hearings that typically run from 9am until 11pm.
The Senate doesn’t sit at the same time as estimates hearings, so any senator, not just those on the relevant committee, can ask questions.
In Parliament House’s committee rooms, the chair sits on one side with the committee secretary nearby. They are surrounded by senators from the opposition, minor parties, independents and government backbenchers.
On the other side, the witnesses are senior public servants who sit at a long table with the minister (or their representative from the Senate) in the centre. In the rows behind are more public servants and ministerial staff, and the hearings are open to the media and the public.
Television cameras are fixed unobtrusively around the room, recording continuously, and Hansard reporters sit at a side table, producing the official transcript.
A daunting prospect
Estimates hearings are resource intensive. In preparation, both sides will have scoured departments’ portfolio budget statements, corporate plans and annual reports as well as the outcomes of appointments, grants, tenders and audit reports.
They will have reviewed Hansard records and answers to questions on notice, along with freedom of information disclosure logs and recent media coverage. Today it’s likely both sides will have used a variety of AI tools in their preparation.
In the weeks leading up to estimates, public servants will have prepared those large, tabbed folders of briefing materials you see on the tables. Both sides will have held strategy meetings. Witnesses will have practised answers at mock estimates sessions.
Appearing at estimates can be a daunting prospect for public servants, who typically operate behind the scenes. I’ve heard it described as “the hardest open-book exam you will ever do”, and everyone who has appeared remembers their first time. For me, it was a then-government backbencher looking to get information about coal exports on the record.
Estimates is theatre. The hearings are televised live and recorded. While the actors are sitting in the room, many of the questions senators ask are developed outside the room during the hearings and fed in electronically.
Most witnesses will want to appear helpful but say little beyond what is on the public record. They will be keen to show their professionalism and capability in handling any difficult questions they face. Their job can depend on it.
“Former senator Robert Hill observed that few parliaments scrutinise government finances as intensely as the Australian Senate.”
Most public servants do not want to become the story, and a long-running KPI has been to avoid appearing on the evening news or the front page of tomorrow’s paper. Today, the KPI includes avoiding providing a soundbite that could go viral or a video clip that could do the rounds on TikTok.
Public servants must remain apolitical. The government guidelines for witnesses highlight their duty to assist ministers fulfil their accountability obligations by providing “full and accurate information to the parliament about the factual and technical background to policies and their administration”. They also have a responsibility to the government of the day. It’s a balance.
So, is Senate estimates effective?
Yes, in terms of adding to the transparency, openness and accountability of government. Former senator Robert Hill observed that few parliaments around the world scrutinise government finances as intensely as the Australian Senate, and former senator John Faulkner described Senate estimates as the “best accountability mechanism of any Australian parliament”.
Could we do better? Again, yes. Twenty years ago, there was a concern that a growing number of questions were being taken on notice by public servants. Today, the number of questions on notice being asked by the senators is growing exponentially.
The Parliament House website lists more than 11,000 questions on notice asked this year before this round of hearings began. That’s an average of 77 every day, including weekends, a number that has more than tripled since 2022.
While the answers contribute to the transparency and accountability of government, responding to so many questions must be consuming an enormous amount of time and diverting resources away from other public service work. While AI is probably used in drafting questions and answers, the responses can’t be left solely to AI because they require human judgment and multiple layers of clearances including by the relevant minister.
Given a key question public servants consider in their daily work is “Will this survive scrutiny at estimates?”, these hearings continue to provide a key accountability mechanism for government, but they come at a growing cost. Harry Evans said accountability operates in the swamp of politics, but perhaps it’s time to limit the number of fishing expeditions being conducted in the swamp.
‘Outrageous’: Senators slam public service push to restrict social clips
Senators are demanding the government produce evidence justifying a call by top civil servants to ban MPs from posting unflattering video clips of them on social media, in an escalating row over transparency and parliamentary scrutiny.
The Senate is heading for a showdown with the public service after the deputy secretary for security and estate at the Defence Department, Celia Perkins, told a parliamentary inquiry on Friday that officials did “not consent to the reposting of our evidence to social media sites”.
Independent senator David Pocock. Dominic Lorrimer
Perkins’ request that video evidence given at inquiries not be reposted was overruled by committee clerks, but departmental chiefs have also presented a “secretaries board” submission to a parliamentary standards inquiry asking for an end to the use of social media posts taken from parliament hearings which they say are “presented without context and expose officials to ridicule, hostility or abuse”.
Politicians condemned the demands. Greens senator David Shoebridge called the move an “extraordinary” attempt at censorship, while independent senator David Pocock denounced the public service’s stance as “frankly outrageous”.
“The officials in question are not junior public servants in need of protection, they are senior executives on a base salary over $400,000 whose role includes responding to this kind of scrutiny,” Pocock said.
Pocock, Shoebridge, and Liberal senator Michaelia Cash will push for a vote in the Senate on Wednesday to force the government to produce documents underpinning the public service’s requests to curtail social media posts.
The senators on Tuesday intend to invoke two powerful “orders for the production of documents” to push government ministers to reveal all documentation and communication related to Perkins’ statement and the secretaries board submission, including legal advice and material prompting the requests.
“Committee hearings are public proceedings and – with the exception of in-camera sessions – there should be no barriers to content being shared with the community, be that via parliamentary broadcast or on social media,” said Pocock.
“Transparency is essential to a healthy democracy and these demands are frankly outrageous. Real questions remain over whether this stance was encouraged or orchestrated by the government.”
The submission from the nation’s most senior mandarins was tabled to an unprecedented joint parliamentary inquiry into the behaviour codes and standards in Commonwealth parliamentary workplaces, launched without fanfare in June.
The secretaries board – made up of the heads of government departments and chaired by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet chief, Steven Kennedy – insisted the request for tighter guidelines was not an attempt to avoid robust questioning or “legitimate and necessary” scrutiny.
Hearings, inquiries and Senate estimates are all livestreamed for public viewing.
“The concern arises only where conduct crosses the line into behaviour that demeans, intimidates, humiliates or personally targets official witnesses,” it said, warning of potential “psychosocial” health hazards.
It warned that comments sections under social media posts could become “highly offensive and sometimes defamatory”, with officials being attacked over their physical appearance and women targeted in particular. Agencies had been required in some situations to conduct insider threat assessments.
Officials had been referred to as “despicable”, “filth”, “political puppet”, “bigot”, “pig”, “KKK member”, “sleazy”, “incompetent retard”, “parasite”, “stupid”, “shill”, “demonic”, “putrid mutt”, “criminal”, “fraud”, “clown”, “scumbag”, “lying corrupt grub”, the submission said.
Among the department officials’ requests are the explicit adoption of behaviour standards and the behaviour code for the examination of witnesses, guidance for the treatment of witnesses and social media use and education for MPs on the role of the public service.
Former Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo, who appeared in parliament some 200 times over 21 years, said official witnesses should never be ridiculed but it was “entirely appropriate” for MPs to “highlight instances of officials being evasive, obstructive, and in some cases clearly not across their brief”.
“Use of social media is one way to do this. There is no place for crude, rude, or sneering imputations being made in such social media activity, and the parliament’s own behaviour code makes that clear,” he said.
“We all know such behaviour when we see it. If a member of parliament has fallen short in this regard, it is for the relevant house of parliament to take action, as it sees fit.”
A Defence spokesperson said the department strongly supported parliamentary “accountability, transparency and robust scrutiny” but was concerned about social media excerpts “presented without context” that “exposes officials to ridicule, hostility or abuse”.
Gallagher says public servants' careers have been ruined by Senate estimates
