The officials in charge of securing the two parliamentary chambers were not included in a review of Parliament House security but they “weren’t excluded” either, a committee hearing has been told.
Labor senators used the opening day of estimates hearings in Canberra on Monday to ask why the Senate’s usher of the black rod and the House’s serjeant-at-arms were left out of the review that began in September 2014.
“I find it extraordinary, quite frankly, that you’d have a security review and leave off the two people who are head of security of the two parliaments,” the Labor senator Joe Ludwig said.
The Senate president, Stephen Parry, did not agree with the characterisation.
“They weren’t excluded … but they weren’t included,” he told the finance and administration committee.
The Department of Parliamentary Services said the security review involved a private-sector security consultant and representatives from the attorney general’s department, the Australian federal police, Asio and the office of the then prime minister, Tony Abbott.
Rachel Callinan, the usher of the black rod, said: “The review itself, the decision to undertake the review was made by people other than myself. I didn’t participate in that decision-making; I wasn’t invited to participate in the review. I would like to think I might have something to contribute had I been asked to participate but that wasn’t the circumstance at the time.”
The usher of the black rod directs attendant staff in the Senate and the galleries and provides advice to the president and senators on the physical security of the building, according to the parliament’s website. In the House of Representatives, the serjeant-at-arms has responsibility for the security of the chamber and its galleries.
Callinan confirmed the parliament’s security management board also did not directly take part in the review, although some of its members – the DPS and the AFP – did.
Parry argued it was not a “review” as such but “a collection of government departments that were going to be responsible for the implementation of a capital works program; and it did relate to security but it was a capital works program”.
He said the issue was aired at a previous estimates hearing and, since then, the serjeant and usher of the black rod had attended taskforce hearings. “This estimates process picked up a slight flaw and we amended it straight away,” Parry said.
The committee also challenged Parry about his travel entitlements. He has argued that the prime minister should no longer be required to approve proposed trips.
A question on notice revealed the Department of the Senate had met the $4,690 cost of an official visit to New Zealand by Parry and a senior adviser.
The committee was told Parry, a strong advocate of the independence of parliamentary positions, had written to Malcolm Turnbull about the approval arrangements.
“Concurrence has been granted in every occasion for 19 years, bar one, so really the presiding officers, both speaker and president – when determining their own travel – the letter that comes back from the prime minister says it acknowledges the presiding officers have the right to determine their own travel,” Parry said.
“I’m very happy to be guided by the [Senate’s] appropriations and staffing committee ... I think I’ve been more than upfront.”
But Labor’s Senate leader, Penny Wong, who is a member of the staffing committee, said she believed the panel was kept in the dark.
“I don’t believe there was a frank, transparent discussion about what you were proposing to change around your personal entitlements with the staffing committee, and if the committee is not going to be run in that way we’ll consider our participation in it and we’ll deal with things in a different way,” she said.
“One of the benefits of concurrence [approval by the prime minister] is there is some check on a president who might lose a little perspective about what would be a sensible extent of expenditure of public monies on overseas trips, like a helicopter for example.”
