Australian Senate Committees - Membership and Rules of Committees

Membership and Rules of Committees

The Senate's committees are formed at the commencement of each new parliament, in accordance with rules set out in the Standing Orders. The committees exist until the first day of the following parliament, in contrast to the lower house committees, which cease to exist as soon as parliament is prorogued for an election.

The most important and high profile of the committees are the pairs of standing committees. These each have six members. The chair of each legislation committee is chosen from amongst the government members, the deputy chair from amongst non-government members. The reverse is the case for the references committees. Because the chair has a casting vote in the event of a committee vote being tied, the government effectively controls the legislation committees, while the non-government parties control the references committees.

The membership and rules of committees, including those that operated during the Coalition's period of control, are shown below:

Committees have two types of members: full members and participating members. In the case of standing committees, full members are the six outlined above. In addition, however, any Senator may arrange for the Senate to agree to their being made a participating member of the committee. This gives them the same rights as full members, with the important exception of being unable to vote on motions in private meetings of the committees.

The committees are governed by the Standing Orders of the Senate, as well as being able to pass their own resolutions to govern certain aspects of their operations (such as the processing of correspondence and submissions to inquiries).

Committees are designed to assist the Senate as a whole. Thus the main formal structure of their work is that the Senate refers something to a committee for examination, and the committee reports back to the Senate on that matter. These reports are tabled during parliamentary sittings, but can also be presented when the Senate is not in session. Committees can gather evidence and will often hold public hearings to assist this process. To gather their evidence committees can (with exceptions) travel from place to place to hear evidence. Committees are able to order the production of documents and the appearance of witnesses (powers that are in practice used very sparingly). Most evidence taken by committees (both written submissions and transcripts of public hearings) is published, however committees have the power to take evidence confidentially (in camera), and regularly do so. Committees hold both public hearings and conduct business at private meetings. The minutes of private meetings are confidential (in contrast, for example, to those of New South Wales parliamentary committees).

The rules governing committees are slightly different when conducting budget estimates hearings. In particular, during estimates hearings,

• any Senator may ask questions of the officials appearing before the committee (normally only members can ask questions)
• no evidence can be taken on a confidential basis (normally this is an option available to a committee)
• under Standing Orders, Senators may direct questions to any government agency, but only within the portfolio areas for which the committee has oversight. The committee cannot restrict the agencies to which Senators may direct questions (although the committee can control whether this happens at the public hearing, or whether it must be done in writing afterwards).