Problems with Parliamentary Committee Evaluation: Light at the End of the Tunnel?

For a long time many scholars advocated the establishment of a comprehensive system of parliamentary committees as the principal means of institutional revival. Have the hopes of the reformers been realised? This article, a development of the author’s earlier research on committees, finds Australian academic research to be wanting and outlines a methodology for evaluating committee performance based on the functions of Parliament, and application of techniques of program evaluation and scientific method. The article especially questions the validity of critical assessments of committees of the House of Representatives. Why evaluate the performance of parliamentary committees? Parliamentary committees are now permanent, specialised and institutionalised (Longley and Davidson, 1998). In the Australian Commonwealth Parliament there are more than 40 committees of scrutiny (Parliament of Australia, www.aph.gov.au), defined as those that scrutinise the work of the Executive Government and its administration. Committees cost more than $15 million a year to operate (annual reports and portfolio budget statements 2002–2003) and scarce financial resources have other uses. Therefore, periodic studies of committees are necessary to find out how well or how poorly committees are travelling. Such studies can be used by decision-makers to enhance committee performance. These studies can also add t