Explainer: What are orders for documents?

As mentioned earlier on the live blog, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher has emphasised just how many orders for documents the Albanese Government has complied with: more than any other government in history.

It’s a retort to criticism about the orders for documents that Labor hasn’t complied with, specifically to release the Briggs review into public sector board appointments (looking into concerns about “jobs for mates”).

But what are orders for documents?

Orders for documents

Orders for documents or OPD (technically, “orders for the production of documents”) are used by the houses of Parliament (the House of Representatives or the Senate) to require the government to produce information.

Every Australian parliament in the country has the power to order the production of documents (from their respective governments; the Victorian Legislative Council can’t make the Queensland Government produce documents).

If you have seen the ABC’s very good (but very distressing) reporting on abuse in childcare centres, that reporting is based in part on information revealled by a successful order for documents from the NSW Parliament.

While either house of Parliament has the power to order the production of documents, in practice they mostly come from the Senate because the government has the numbers in the House of Representatives.

What is the volume and nature of OPDs?

The power to order documents is inherited from the United Kingdom’s House of Commons. Its use has ebbed and flowed: between 1901 and 1906, the Senate issued over a hundred orders for the production of documents before the practice fell into disuse in the 1910s. It was revived in the 1970s, and the Senate’s annual volume of orders for the production of documents in its first six years was not matched until the 1990s.

Some orders for documents have remained in force for years and changed the culture and practice of government departments. The website listing all government contracts, AusTender, has its origins in an order for documents, and it is thanks to a different order that Australia’s quarterly greenhouse gas emissions data is published promptly.

I won’t deny that orders for documents are sometimes for things I think are trivial and intended just to score a political point. But that was also true when the Liberal–National Coalition was in government, and Labor was putting forward orders for documents. And a Senate order for documents cannot pass without multi-party support; it is never just the result of one party’s agenda.

What happens if the government refuses to comply with an order for documents?

The consequences are political, not legal. The Senate is within its rights to stop voting on the government’s legislation until it gets the relevant information. Or to take away some of the government’s privileges, like being able to sit at the central table (this symbolic honour is more important to them than you may think!)

In this case, the Senate has said that since the government won’t be transparent on this issue, the Senate will demand more transparency in other areas: by extending how long Senate Question Time runs for.