Letter to the Speaker regarding the Standing Orders review
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The Commissioner has written to the Speaker about the Standing Orders review. Standing Orders are the rules of the House and its select committees. They detail how Parliament carries out its work. Every term, the House of Representatives looks at how it can work more effectively over the next three years.
A significant part of the Commissioner’s job is to assist Parliament and parliamentarians to maintain oversight of the effectiveness of environmental governance and the wise use of public money in the pursuit of both legislated and governmental environmental outcomes.
To be able to hold ministers and government agencies to account, reliable, relevant information is essential. However, there are significant gaps in data, information and knowledge about the environment. Those gaps are seriously impeding better environmental management and hindering anyone wanting to examine the effectiveness of that management.
In previous investigations the Commissioner has suggested changes to legislation aimed at improving the supply of financial and nonfinancial information. In this letter to the Speaker, he outlines some changes to current parliamentary practice that could be implemented more quickly.
- Select committees could ask for the Government to provide them with financial and nonfinancial information aggregated by outcome. This would be in addition to information contained in appropriation document and annual reports.
- Select committees could make more use of independent advisors to help them craft probing questions, make sense of the responses they receive, and act as a source of independent advice more generally.