Politics, Theatre And Policy: Your Guide To Australia’s Senate Estimates

CANBERRA — Three times a year, a wave of nervous bureaucrats clutching stuffed white binders cram into the committee rooms of Australian Parliament House, awaiting their turn to answer questions about the inner workings of government in hearings that can range from mind-numbingly drab to explosive.

It’s a spectacle known as Senate estimates, in which members of Australia’s upper house grill senior public servants from major departments and dozens of Commonwealth agencies about how they’re spending taxpayer funds, designing policy and advising politicians.

There’s constant tension between a public service that believes its duty to provide “frank and fearless” advice at times requires that it remain confidential and those left baffled by opaque answers and delaying tactics to basic questions.

Like congressional appropriations hearings in the U.S., estimates are scheduled around the budget in May, with an additional week of hearings typically held in October, and a supplementary week in February.

In recent years department bosses have gone public about a belief that estimates has turned “nasty” towards public servants, prompting an unusual plea for politicians to stop sharing their committee evidence in social media clips that attract online abuse.

Opposition and crossbench politicians have shut this down as “frankly outrageous.”

The man who knows the complexities of committee procedure better than anybody else says the biggest conception about estimates is “that it’s necessarily adversarial.”

“Of course, much of it is. Estimates is about scrutinising the operations of departments and agencies, and of course this occurs in a political setting,” said Clerk of the Senate, Richard Pye.

There are requirements for both sides to be respectful and accountable, but “just like in the Senate, there is a mix of politics and theatre and policy.”

“Sometimes senators are genuinely frustrated by their inability to get answers; sometimes public servants are trying valiantly but failing to get their point across; sometimes exchanges have a performative element.”

The revelations

Many in Australian politics are so jaded by officials’ resistance to give away new information that they’ve dismissed estimates — but the hearings have been the backdrop of major revelations over the years.

Labor Sen. Deborah O’Neill blew a scandal about unethical conduct within consulting firm PwC wide open in a late-night estimates hearing, when her question revealed confidential government information had been shared with up to 30 staff at the firm.

Evidence at estimates in Oct. 2019 revealed then Nationals deputy leader Bridget McKenzie had rejected 618 applications for community sports infrastructure, despite advice from a government agency to approve them. The audit office later found the Coalition government had largely ignored merit-based recommendations to fund grants in marginal and priority seats in a saga that came to be known as “sports rorts.”

The hearings also serve as a scheduled accountability check for public servants — former Parliamentary Services secretary Rob Stefanic was forced to explain his handling of a “perceived conflict of interest" regarding his relationship to a deputy secretary, while former anti-corruption boss Paul Brereton had to front up and answer questions about his own “mistake of law” in a major corruption probe.

The theatrics

Love it or hate it, there is a dramatic element to estimates.

Senior public servant Stephanie Foster was once accused of winking at then Finance Minister Simon Birmingham — forcing her to rule out that she had done so intentionally.

Liberal Sen. Sarah Henderson and Infrastructure secretary Jim Betts had a stand-off over Betts’ choice not to wear a tie, prompting his friend and fellow secretary Natalie James to performatively show up wearing a tie. 

Former Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo once called a journalist a “bottom feeder” and former Liberal Sen. Bill Heffernan brought a mock “pipe bomb” into a committee to make the point that security arrangements were “a joke.”

The do’s

For public servants: Support the free flow of information.

The thing that people get wrong about the guidelines for officials appearing before estimates is that they’re supposed to help you answer questions, not avoid them, Pye says.

“A key principle underpinning the guidelines is that they ‘are intended to assist in the freest possible flow of information to the parliament’. That’s up at the beginning of the guidelines under the heading ‘Accountability’,” the clerk said.

“It sometimes feels that people jump straight to the material about making ‘public interest immunity claims’ to seek to justify withholding information.

“I think there’s a tendency to reflexive secrecy – more pronounced in some departments than others – that undermines accountability and just means senators have to take more time to pursue answers that, in the end, are often innocuous.”

For parliamentarians: Always ask the follow-up question.

Hearings follow rigid structures dictated by portfolio budget outcomes, and once officials are dismissed from estimates they’re rarely recalled — so don’t miss your shot.

Asking the right questions takes research and opposition senators will often write to agencies seeking data and information before hearings, so they can pull out any trends or areas of concern.

Some politicians request research from the parliamentary library to get up to speed, while journalists often have lines of inquiry to offer up too.

It’s also worth being flexible — public servants will sometimes use opening statements to drop bombshells about changes of leadership or updates to internal investigations.

Published Senate estimates briefs often include information that public servants will only release “if pressed,” so always ask the follow-up question.

The dont’s

For public servants: Take everything on notice.

“One of the most commented on changes has been the increase in the number of written questions being placed on notice; a trend that started about 6 or 8 years ago,” Pye said.

It’s a trend that annoys politicians and their staffers to no end. Most Senators prefer a less detailed answer or an estimate over a mound of paperwork months later — and no one has been thrown in jail for contempt of the Senate for being helpful.

For parliamentarians: Waste time. 

The golden rule is that public servants can’t be asked to give their opinions on matters of policy, in the interest of remaining apolitical. It’s why the portfolio minister or a representative from the Senate fronts up to estimates — for testy political exchanges.

Estimates hearings offer a mechanism for transparency beyond the Freedom of Information Act, which allows any member of the public to apply for documents, but some of the same public interest considerations apply.

Apart from national security information, exemptions around “deliberative” matter probably cause Senators the most pain in estimates. In general, information that relates to opinions, advice, recommendations and consultation prepared for government decision-making can be withheld — but only if releasing it would be contrary to the public interest.

But the guidelines also note that the odds are better for Senators — “because of the Executive’s primary accountability to the parliament, the public interest in providing information to a parliamentary inquiry may be greater than the public interest in releasing information under the FOI Act.”