CURRENT ACCOUNTABILITY ISSUES

The main debates have centred on the roles of two types of institution— Parliament and extra-parliamentary agencies—and on the relationships of two key actors—the minister (with respect to Parliament, public servants and clients) and the public servant (in relation to Parliament, ministers and clients). There are also accountability issues arising from contract and performance management and the implications of corporate governance for accountability.

Parliament

There are three issues involving the Parliament. The first is ministerial responsibility and the failure of parliamentary sanctions to apply directly in practice. The second is the capacity of Parliament to respond to the new management environment, particularly through scrutiny by parliamentary com- mittees. A third is the relationship of public servants to Parliament.

A decade ago, Parliament was being criticised by the Department of Finance (1989, p. 15) for being slow in redirecting its lines of inquiry away from a focus upon how devolved powers were being managed to the new emphasis on results. Parliamentary scrutiny appeared to reflect the more traditional forms of accountability, focusing on process rather than outputs and outcomes. Parliament has since come some way towards demonstrating greater compre- hension and acceptance of new public management, although market and contractual aspects have presented new challenges. This debate remains unresolved.

The other issue is the relationship of public servants to the Parliament. Various parliamentary committees have adopted an increasingly expansive interpretation with respect to the extent to which public servants should be held directly accountable for their activities, a position strongly resisted by the government of the day. The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration concluded that both ministers and public servants were directly accountable to Parliament, although it defined the accountability of public servants as ‘less direct’, and characterised it in terms of ‘keeping Parliament informed and assisting parliamentary scrutiny of public

administration and expenditure’ (HoRSCFPA, 1990, p. 92). This issue continues as an element in the perennial executive/legislative struggle.

Extra-parliamentary agencies

Another debate concerns the standing of agencies which are external to departments but part of the machinery of government (see the external/formal category in Exhibit 15.2). This issue emerged during the Commonwealth Management Advisory Board’s (1993) review of accountability. The official view was that these agencies should be treated as adjuncts to accountability, a position that was vigorously contested by the Auditor-General. The Clerk of the Senate, Harry Evans (1999), has recently observed that extra-parliamentary accountability is very dependent on political processes, and they continue to be important. The position at the state level has been even more problematic, with Auditor-Generals experiencing constraints on attempts to overcome ac- countability deficits (Exhibit 15.6).

Ministerial responsibility

The traditional notion of ministers being responsible to Parliament for all matters affecting their portfolio has long been formally a cornerstone of responsible government in the Australian variant of the Westminster system. Indeed, the associated element of ministerial resignation, although seen as a fiction as early as the 1950s, was still maintained by Prime Ministers until the 1980s. However, the overwhelming evidence has been that while ministers may resign for private misconduct or unethical behaviour, they do not themselves take ministerial responsibility to this point when it comes to policy or maladministration. The main recent exception was the resignation of Minister Ros Kelly (Exhibit 15.7) (Thompson and Tillotsen, 1999).

An ‘insider’s’ view of ministerial responsibility is that although a broader notion of responsibility applies, a minister nevertheless remains responsible:

Responsibility occurs if the minister, or their office, was directly involved or if the minister should have acted. The latter case applies if there were recurring or

‘The Auditor-General has no entitlement to access Cabinet documents even if they are relevant (or even necessary) for the purposes of audit . . . The absence of access to these documents allows accountability to be evaded. It was this lack of accountability that enabled ‘‘WA Inc’’ to prosper . . . I can advise Parliament that the NSW accountability framework shares a number of the lamentable weaknesses then existing in Western Australia . . . Other jurisdictions—such as the Commonwealth and Victoria—do not have the severe restrictions in New South Wales legislation.’

Source: NSW Auditor-General, 1998a.

EXHIBIT 15.6

Access and government secrecy

systemic poor performance by the department. Then . . . the minister is respon- sible and accountable even if the day-to-day administration has been delegated. (Keating, 1999, p. 40)

The somewhat inconclusive current position is, then, that the minister is still responsible for the portfolio even if the ultimate formal mechanism for bringing them to account is defunct. It has been argued that, as ministers have exercised greater control and ownership of policy over the last fifteen years, they therefore have more responsibility (Blick, 1999). Ministers may still be held responsible through other means, including political and other sanctions in Cabinet and through public critique and parliamentary scrutiny. This may still seem ad hoc and capricious where it depends on the extent to which the Prime Minister can withstand the political embarrassment (Exhibit 15.8).

Point for reflection

Under what circumstances should a minister accept the need to resign his or her portfolio?

Minister Ros Kelly resigned over the ‘Sports Rorts’ case because the government was unable to respond effectively to the allegations that there was both a ‘rort’ and a ‘cover-up’. An efficiency audit by the Australian National Audit Office established that the minister had direct responsibility for the management of the process of grant allocations to community groups, but was unable to provide justifications for her decisions, which favoured electorates held by members of her party. The minister advised a subsequent inquiry by a House of Repre- sentatives committee that a whiteboard had been used, and the records erased. The expectation of public accountability is that decisions involving funding from the public purse should be open to scrutiny and defence.

EXHIBIT 15.7