PARLIAMENT OF NEW SOUTH WALES DEPARTMENT OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL OF THE LEGISLATIVE DEPARTMENT OF NEW SOUTH WALES PARLIAMENT DEPARTMENT OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL annual report 2018 l ANNUAL REPORT 2018 REPORT ANNUAL LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL Parliament of New South Wales Macquarie Street SYDNEY NSW 2000 www.parliament.nsw.gov.au Ph (02) 9230 2111 LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL CONTACT US The Honourable John Ajaka MLC Legislative Council President of the Legislative Council Parliament House Parliament House Macquarie Street Macquarie Street Sydney NSW 2000 SYDNEY NSW 2000 www.parliament.nsw.gov.au Email [email protected] Dear Mr President Switchboard • (02) 9230 2111 It is with pleasure that I submit for your information and presentation between 9.00am and 5.00pm weekdays, excluding to the House the annual report for the Department of the Legislative public holidays Council for the year ended 30 June 2018. As you are aware, the Department of the Legislative Council is not @nswupperhouse legislatively required to table an annual report. However, as has @nsw_upperhouse been customary over previous years, the opportunity to provide information on the performance of the Department is embraced. The content of the report incorporates the reporting requirements of the Annual Reports (Departments) Act 1985 and the Public Finance ACCESS TO THE CHAMBER and Audit Act 1983, particularly in regard to the Department of the The Legislative Council Chamber and public areas of Legislative Council’s aims, objectives, operations and financial Parliament House are open to members of the public performance. from 9.00 am to 5.00 pm, every weekday (excluding I commend the report and hope you find it informative. public holidays). Your sincerely During sitting days, public access to the Chamber is restricted to the visitors’ gallery, where visitors can watch the proceedings of the House. A calendar specifying sitting days is available from the Parliament’s website. David Blunt Clerk of the Parliaments Design and Print: Studio Rouge Designs THE YEAR AT A GLANCE 2017/2018 2016/2017 2015/2016 2014/2015 2013/2014 Department staff* 37.8FTE* 37.8FTE* 37.8FTE 39FTE 39FTE Secretary Research Assistants 48.8FTE 48.8FTE 46FTE 48FTE 47FTE Sitting days 48 51 51 39 51 Sitting hours 378 375 405 305 393 Bills passed 77 65 89 64 97 Amendments to bills (circulated) 672 633 714 478 659 Amendments to bills (agreed to) 102 63 99 121 124 Orders for papers 6 5 4 19 26 Notices of motion given 893 634 683 592 617 Committee inquiries 47 37 40 42 30 Committee reports tabled 20 18 16 26 18 Submissions to committees 1,935 2,299 1,121** 1202 1882 Inquiry witnesses 677 988 705 471 627 (hearings and forums) * Of an allocation of 39 FTE. The Department also employs an Indigenous cadet, a position partly-funded by the Australian Government. ** Note: An additional 201 pro-forma responses were also received by the inquiry into Local Government in New South Wales. These responses were not processed or published and are not included in this total of 1,121. FINANCIAL SUMMARY 2017/2018 2016/2017 2015/2016 2014/2015 2013/2014 Net cost of services for the 26,534,631 25,835,074 24,980,811 25,562,020 23,366,183 Legislative Council Operational, Committees 6,048,509 5,949,958 5,945,411 5,758,091 5,479,059 and other costs 1 PRESIDENT’S FOREWORD The Hon John Ajaka MLC, President of I am pleased to present to the House the 2017-2018 Annual Report for the Department of the the Legislative Council. The principal role Legislative Council. of the President is to preside over the House. Together with the Speaker of the During 2017-2018 the 56th Parliament continued its legislative program with 77 Bills passed, Legislative Assembly, the President is jointly responsible for the Parliamentary 15 of which were amended in the Legislative Council. I am particularly proud of the passage precincts. of the Aboriginal Languages Bill, which recognises the languages of our first peoples. The Legislative Council embarked on a tremendous amount of committee work this year with 47 inquiries being established and 20 reports being tabled. This has been a record year for Legislative Council committees with 24 committee inquiries being active at one time. In 2017- 2018 we welcomed two new members, the Hon Wes Fang MLC and the Hon Natalie Ward MLC following the well-earned retirement of two esteemed colleagues, the Hon Duncan Gay and the Hon Greg Pearce, with 46 years of parliamentary service between them. I thank them for their valued service to the Legislative Council and the people of New South Wales. I am immensely pleased that this report provides updates on a number of significant projects undertaken by the department including the launch of the Annotated Standing Orders of the New South Wales Legislative Council by Ms Susan Want and Ms Jenelle Moore. This publication provides a complete resource detailing the operation, history and rationale of each of the Council’s 234 standing orders. I’m sure it will serve as an enduring guide for members and parliamentary officers alike for years to come. The department proudly continued to support the parliament’s engagement with the wider community with several events throughout the year, including our annual Australia Day, Family Fun Day and Sydney Open festivities, as well as our management of the Fountain Court art exhibition space and school talks conducted by our Chamber Support team. On behalf of all members I express my gratitude to the Clerk and all staff of the department for their dedication to supporting the Legislative Council throughout the year. The Honourable John Ajaka MLC President 2 DEPARTMENT OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL annual report 2018 PRESIDENT’S FOREWORD CLERK’S REVIEW 4 AT A GLANCE contents7 IN THE HOUSE 23 IN COMMITTEES 33 ENGAGING WITH THE COMMUNITY 45 PARLIAMENTARY RELATIONS 53 CORPORATE GOVERNANCE 61 FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE 73 APPENDICES 77 APPENDIX 1 78 Members of the Legislative Council as at 30 June 2018 APPENDIX 2 80 Legislative Council members’ allowances and expenditure APPENDIX 3 88 Committee reports and Government responses APPENDIX 4 89 Committee travel expenditure APPENDIX 5 92 Membership of all Legislative Council committees APPENDIX 6 97 Membership of Joint Committees – Legislative Council members APPENDIX 7 98 Inquiry statistics INDEX 100 3 CLERK’S REVIEW Mr David Blunt, Clerk of the Parliaments. The 2017/18 reporting year became one of the more dramatic years in the recent history of The Clerk provides expert advice the New South Wales Legislative Council. on parliamentary law, practice and During this reporting period, two long serving members of the Legislative Council, the Hon procedure to the President, ministers and members of the Legislative Council. Duncan Gay and the Hon Greg Pearce, resigned and were replaced by the Hon Wes Fang The Clerk is also responsible to the and the Hon Natalie Ward respectively. Since the end of the reporting period, there has President for the efficient and effective been one further change in the membership of the House, with Dr Mehreen Faruqi resigning administration of the Department of the from the Legislative Council to fill a casual vacancy created in the Australian Senate by the Legislative Council. resignation of (former NSW MLC) Senator Lee Rhiannon. Dr Faruqi’s place was taken by former MLC, Ms Cate Faehrmann. As foreshadowed in last year’s report, in 2017/18 the NSW Parliament was honoured to host two significant inter-parliamentary conferences: the 47th Presiding Officers and Clerks Conference and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) Australia and Pacific Joint Regional Conference. The Office of the Clerk of the Parliaments has continued to take primary responsibility for the administration of the CPA during this period and was centrally involved in arrangements for those very successful conferences. Two important publications were officially launched in 2017/18, details of which are special features in this annual report: the third monograph in the Legislative Council’s oral history series: The Legislative Council and responsible government: Egan v Willis and Egan v Chadwick; and The Annotated Standing Orders of the New South Wales Legislative Council. We are very proud of both publications, which add to the collection of scholarly works on parliamentary law and practice. The publication of the first of these publications, timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Egan cases, proved to be particularly timely in view of developments in the first half of 2018. For most of the 56th Parliament, since the 2015 election, the Government has had a fairly comfortable time in the Legislative Council. As with the 50th Parliament (1991-95) the Government has only required two additional votes to win divisions. Consequently, it was unusually rare during the 2015-2017 period for the Government to lose control of business, relatively few amendments were made to legislation and there was a 20 year low in the number of orders for the production of documents agreed to. With a member of the Government crossing the floor on a small number of occasions in the first half of 2018, however, the dynamic in the chamber shifted substantially and a number of very interesting procedural developments resulted. Twenty years after the Egan cases, 2018 saw a majority in the House for the first time challenge the refusal of a government to produce documents on the grounds that they were, or contained, “cabinet information”. The documents in question, a number of business cases for large capital projects and a consultant report on an area of public policy, were eventually produced - with redacted versions tabled and made public and unredacted versions dealt with as being the subject of claims of privilege.