THE THREE COMMITTEE SYSTEMS OF THE AUSTRALIAN PARLIAMENT- A.pdfVIP

The Three Committee Systems of the Australian Parliament – A Developmental Overview? 111 THE THREE COMMITTEE SYSTEMS OF THE AUSTRALIAN PARLIAMENT- A DEVELOPMENTAL OVERVIEW? John Halligan, John Power and Robin Miller, University of Canberra Parliamentary institutions have undergone a revival internationally during the last twenty years. As a starting point for our inquiry into parliamentary change, we have focused on the one dimension that has been universally acknowledged as having had transformative effects on world Parliaments (Longley and Davidson 1998). The Australian Parliament over the past two decades has already changed to the point where almost all non-executive members (i.e. excluding the Ministry and shadow cabinet) are preoccupied for much of their time with parliamentary committees. Those who are most attentive to committee work (one quarter of the members) are now devoting at least a quarter of their time to this work. In equivalent full-time terms, this means that at least ten per cent of the time (a conservative estimate) of the Members of the Parliament is now committed to committee work. The number of parliamentary committee reports produced annually in the recent past has ranged between 100 and 200. The Commonwealth Parliament is distinguished internationally by having three committee systems, one located with in each house, the third set operating at the interface between the two and composed of members from both. Three questions are relevant: Why have three committee systems emerged? Why have they developed in different ways and at different times? Do the three systems specialise in differing types of committee work? This paper addre