Topics: Senate estimates
25 October 2024
Tom Ravlic: Hello and welcome to Critical Line Item, my name is Tom Ravlic. Thank you for joining me for this particular podcast. Governments can be somewhat less than transparent in the normal course of business, just the way governments work. But at various points in time, parliamentarians, in particular the senators in the Australian Parliament are able to prise open the mysteries of the bureaucracy, if I can put it that way, through the power of the Senate to request documents and also conduct inquiries, and also to participate in a process called Senate estimates. We’re coming up to a period of Senate estimates that kicks off on November the 4th and one of the key players from the Coalition side, the leader of the Opposition in the Senate in Australia is Senator Simon Birmingham, who will talk to us about the way in which Senate estimates works, its role in government accountability, and some of the pitfalls in the way the estimates process operates. Simon, thanks for joining me.
Simon Birmingham: Hello, Tom. It’s great to be with you.
Tom Ravlic: Now, if there are those who will not completely understand what estimates is all about. So, in order to build the foundation for someone listening to this particular podcast, what is Senate estimates and why does it matter?
Simon Birmingham: Senate estimates is technically the scrutiny by the Senate of government expenditure and particularly of budgeted government expenditure. But of course, because everything is ultimately funded through that government expenditure, estimates becomes a key measure of accountability across all of the agencies of government where not just ministers but critically departmental officials come to the table and face quite lengthy scrutiny and questioning by senators from all of the different mix of political parties represented in the Senate. And it gives a far greater opportunity to unpick issues, expose problems and really ensure accountability and transparency than you get just through the theatre of Question Time or the day-to-day debate of the Parliament. That’s why estimates is important and it’s important that those principles around accountability and transparency are adhered to, especially by the public servants who appear before Senate estimates.
Tom Ravlic: There are things called standing orders. Are you able to outline how the estimates process works through the rules of Parliament? What are the what are the special things about the estimates process that might not apply to other forms of Parliament?
Simon Birmingham: The meetings of Senate estimates committees are meetings equivalent in many ways to a meeting of the Senate. Parliamentary privilege is extended, standing orders are broadly applicable in the way in which those estimates committees meet. And so, that means that evidence given is covered by the boundaries of privilege. But it also does mean that there is an obligation and expectation put on the departments as they respond to questions, that they must provide information and they must address the questions unless there are quite narrow, what are known as, public interest immunities declared by those officials. So, for example, as the Shadow Foreign Minister, if I’m asking questions and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says we can’t share that with you, then I’ll ask them as to whether they’re making a public interest immunity claim on that information. And if they are, they have to actually explain why – we are making a public interest immunity claim because the disclosure of such information would be detrimental to Australia’s relations with another country and therefore we have to draw the line at this point. And so, if you don’t get to that point, then the expectation is everything is on the table and it is a narrow area where those PII, those public interest immunity claims, can be made relations with other countries or other clearly legal and highly sensitive issues.
Tom Ravlic: In observing Senate estimates in recent times, I’ve noticed a frustration on the part of the Opposition, minor parties and independent members of the crossbench in relation to how questions are being answered by government departments. To begin with, what is your perspective on the manner in which answers are being given at the present time and their quality?
Simon Birmingham: Is a degree of frustration. The Albanese government was elected promising far greater levels of transparency and accountability according to their claims. But what we’ve experienced, especially in the Senate estimates process, is kind of the opposite of those promises from the very start of their setting of a parliamentary calendar. The government tried to actually scrap a whole week of Senate estimates, and we had to work with the Senate crossbench to get that week reinstated and to force that on the government. So initially they were wanting to appear for far less. There’s only four weeks of Senate estimates during the course of a normal calendar year. So that was effectively getting rid of a whole quarter of the scrutiny that occurs through estimates. But thankfully we overturned that. But what we see is that the government subsequently developed a secret manual informing departments largely how to avoid answering questions, which is well outside of the spirit and intent of Senate estimates, and that in many of the responses to questions on notice, there have been far more politicised in their responses than they should be. And so, all of this obviously leads to to frustration and real concern. And what I hope as we approach the next Senate estimates, is that particularly the public servants appearing, realise that their responsibility in appearing before Senate estimates is to the Senate, to the orders that bring them to that table, and to be as transparent and accountable as they possibly can and that the proceedings run far more smoothly when officials do actually provide the information they’re being asked for. Often the biggest controversy is, ironically, actually come from attempts to hide or cover up information rather than from the information that is just routinely disclosed.
Tom Ravlic: One of the issues, Simon, that has come up periodically is this question that people have of when a secretary meets with a minister or other portfolio ministers, and a response that has been encouraged is one that says the Secretary meets with their minister and other portfolio ministers from time to time. Does some of the blame lie on the Opposition and minor parties and crossbenchers in the way questions are framed as well?
Simon Birmingham: Tom, there will always be occasions where people will try to avoid answering a question because they will take a very technical or literal interpretation of the question. But usually, the intent behind the question is pretty clear, and it is really a betrayal of what Senate estimates is meant to be about if officials are avoiding the intent of a question on some technical grounds in the way that it is framed. Look, to take the Q&A example, you just gave about frequency of meetings between ministers and their agency heads. You know, a reasonable answer for an agency head that has really strong engagement and frequent engagement with their minister. A reasonable answer may well be to say, “routinely the Secretary has a weekly meeting every Monday with the minister, you know, plus additional meetings as required, although this is varied according to schedule”. And then if people needed to really dig down further well, of course, subsequent questions could be asked. But quite often those questions about meetings between agency heads and ministers are more about digging into perhaps the junior ministers or the affiliated agency heads, so a department secretary would be derelict in their duty if they weren’t meeting with their cabinet minister, and vice versa. But there’s also a dereliction or a failure to have effective systems in place if junior ministers don’t have access to those departmental secretaries, or if smaller agency heads within portfolio clusters never meet with their minister. It says that that minister is potentially completely ignoring that agency. I think back to when I was the minister for trade, tourism and investment. I obviously had the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and, and engagements through DFAT. All of that was well structured. But it was also important that I had regular engagement with Austrade and Tourism Australia, and that if you let those smaller agencies in your portfolio cluster slip, well, then that is a failure of ministerial accountability. That’s probably really where in those instances, questions about frequency of meetings. They are about testing whether ministers and agency heads are all respectively doing their job as they should.
Tom Ravlic: Is that also a way of testing whether a minister’s on top of their brief?
Simon Birmingham: Well, it is in part. Now, of course, that’s just one of many different lines of questioning routinely explored. But it’s also an example of where if you give an evasive answer like the one you said, where meetings occur from time to time, well, that only raises more suspicions about whether people are doing the job properly. If you answer the question honestly, especially when you’ve got nothing to hide, well, then the whole issue goes away instantly.
Tom Ravlic: Now you’ve been on the other side of the table, right? As a minister.
Simon Birmingham: Yes. Keen to get back there.
Tom Ravlic: And intuition and experience allows you some degree of capacity to anticipate what you might call the set play, as they say in sport. What are the things? What are the tactics that you find most frustrating that you can see coming from the government side while you’re in estimates mode?
Simon Birmingham: I think the excessive use of cabinet in confidence claims has to stand out as one of the more frustrating elements, in terms of the live proceedings of estimates. Yes, I’ve absolutely been there, and I’m sure my record isn’t perfect when people want to go back and scrutinise it. But I like to think we tried to address the questions, and that includes recognising that there is a difference between disclosing content of cabinet deliberations, which is rightly cabinet in confidence versus process issues and questions around how and when cabinet has met or reached certain decisions or had certain people brief it. They are process questions and without good other reason they should be fair game. It is again concerning when governments ministers but also sometimes backed up by officials, you know, rush to expand the scope of what they claim cabinet in confidence over, rather than recognising the distinction between cabinet discussions and deliberations that need to be rightly protected for the effective operation of our system of government versus the procedures, processes and timelines that should rightly be scrutinised to ensure that people again are doing their job properly, or that decision making occurred with appropriate use of those cabinet processes.
Tom Ravlic: One of the tensions I occasionally observe when I’m watching estimates, either in person or at home at my desk looking at the feed, is the struggle senators have when they’re engaging with bureaucrats and trying to stay on target with questioning on an issue rather than tackling an individual. How do you balance that? Because it must be very difficult at times to, you know, maintained a focus on the subject matter rather than an individual that may appear to be obfuscating.
Simon Birmingham: I think that it’s a good insight there, and some of that comes to the personality of different senators. And I always try to take the approach, going into Senate estimates, to be mindful that aside from the minister at the table, everybody else is meant to be an impartial public servant who deserves the respect and regard for their impartiality in their public service that that should come with the job. Now, that can be tested, if the individual in question is less than forthcoming with information. I’m sure, again, we’ve all probably had points of showing that frustration and exasperation from time to time. But on the whole, my approach certainly is to try to leave the theatrics as much as possible at the door and to try to maintain that regard for individuals. But it does need to be a two-way street, and it’s understandable from time to time when a senator does get frustrated with a public servant, if they think they really are excessively providing some type of political cover for the government or the minister.
Tom Ravlic: One of the things that I wonder about, and I suspect there will be some people listening to this who think about the process of preparing for estimates. Estimates is kind of like a marathon. How do you limber up for it?
Simon Birmingham: Yeah, it is one of those funny things I sometimes quietly joke that I think for a minister who is well across their brief, estimates is perhaps easier in government than in opposition. Because if you’re across your brief, understands your issues, and you’re dealing with it every single day, well, then you front up and you answer the questions. But unlike when you’re doing a media interview or standing up in Question Time, you also have all of your departmental officials there with you to help answer those questions and to refer to for points of detail and to explain out issues. Obviously not all ministers are either across their brief or in many cases, they’re representing another minister, which does make it harder and more difficult. But from a non-government, a non-minister perspective, from sitting there asking the questions, particularly when you’re taking the lead as a shadow minister or the like, then estimates is a big task because you need to be able to sustain thoughtful lines of questioning for long periods of time, some of which will go absolutely nowhere. But you are exploring them to see whether there is something to uncover, others of which may be more relevant to the news of the day and which will automatically be of interest.
I guess we in my team take a process of building in part one upon the other, that after now we’re into the third year of this opposition cycle, and we have explored many different issues. Some of those we know there’s no need to go back to. Others absolutely require further exploration and ensuring the government is being accountable or has changed track or has caught up on a particular issue. The work that occurs between estimates in terms of the government documents disclosed, the answers that come back from questions on notice. And of course, the good work of the media in terms of their disclosure, all help to then guide you to have usually a pack of questions, far more than you could hope to get through during an estimates day, and to then prioritise how and what you’re actually going to pursue in the time that is available.
Tom Ravlic: You’ve got only 1 week coming up in the estimates process. How much of a limitation is that for your ability to zero in on some key issues, particularly given that we’re getting close to an election and it may be one of the few occasions you have to explore some things before you’re on the hustings?
Simon Birmingham: These estimates could well be the last ones before an election, and that means they’ll take on even greater importance. That also runs the risk that the government will seek to run even greater interference, particularly again in that third year, the ability of the government to simply blame things on the previous government starts to diminish, especially in terms of the day-to-day management of their own policies and programmes and initiatives. So, it is a critical time. I think the estimates calendar we have is about right for balance. Obviously, we fought to, as I said at the start of this interview, maintain the four weeks of estimates that is the convention and not let the government get away with scrapping one of those weeks. But I’m also mindful that four weeks of estimates through the course of the year is a particular imposition and expectation on the public service to step away from their job of delivering and doing, and instead purely be accountable and answerable for what they’re doing. And now those accountabilities are crucial, and that’s why they need to be there. But as much as from an opposition, I might love to have even more time, you’ve got to be reasonable and recognise that the time you do have is precious time, that you’re taking them away from actually doing the job that they’re expected to do in delivering for the taxpayer.
Tom Ravlic: I’ve been talking to Senator Simon Birmingham is the Leader of the Opposition in the Australian Senate. He is gearing up for estimates coming up on November the 4th. Simon, thank you for joining me for this particular broadcast.
Simon Birmingham: No problem, Tom. Thank you very much. It’s been my pleasure.