Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Committee of Privileges and Members’ Interests, I present the committee’s report entitled Publication of details of Members’ interests on the Australian Parliament House website.

Order that the report be made a parliamentary paper.

by leave—The purpose of the report is to outline to members the committee’s views on the desirability of publication of the details of members’ interests on the Parliament House website and to advise members of a specific proposal for implementation.

As background, I note that, while the Register of Members’ Interests currently is made public in hard copy, it is not published on the Parliament House website. However, as the result of an approach to the committee early in the 42nd Parliament by an organisation, Open Australia, which wished to make the declarations of members’ interests available on its website, the initial declarations of interests by all members of the 42nd Parliament are currently available on the Open Australia website.

The committee is conscious that there is widespread interest in matters concerning members and that there is a strong expectation of accountability and transparency in relation to members’ entitlements and interests. As a result, the committee agreed to explore the issues and options for possible implementation in the 43rd Parliament of electronic access to the Register of Members’ Interests from the Parliament House website. The committee’s considerations had regard to the existing framework provided in the House’s resolution on members’ interests and it does not propose any change to that framework.

The report outlines a proposal from the committee for the publication of the Register of Members’ Interests on the Parliament House website from the commencement of the 43rd Parliament. The committee also is considering a range of security features which will make it more difficult to download the statements, change them, and then present them as original documents. The committee is also considering the issue of the visibility of members’ signatures on the statements.

The committee believes that the approach it proposes to the electronic publication of the Register of Members’ Interests will allow implementation in a way which will achieve a reasonable balance between the considerations of the integrity of the data, the ease of access to those using the system and administrative efficiency. The committee would welcome the views of members and other interested people on the proposal, which would be implemented in the 43rd Parliament.