Public inquiry

Elected officials have long sought advice from outside the confines of the normal institutions of government. These have ranged from personal friends, interest groups-industry associations or trade unions for example-professional lobbyists, hired consultants, and a range of continuing advisory mechanisms across different portfolios. A particular form of advisory mechanism has been the public inquiry.

A public inquiry is a discrete body that comes in various organisational forms: Royal Commissions, task forces, committees, reviews or working parties. These are temporary ad hoc public bodies appointed and existing at the discretion of executive government, not by parliament or some other institution of government. Public inquiry membership is drawn predominantly from outside government and the public service. Inquiry membership often reflects key interest groups from the policy area being investigated. Nevertheless, the majority of inquiries are usually chaired by independent, expert, and eminent persons who give inquiries considerable prestige. Unlike other advisory mechanisms such as consultancies, public inquiries have publicly stated terms of reference, actively promote media attention, and seek public participation through public hearings, forums, interviews, and submissions from the community. Inquiries report to executive government, but the reports are ultimately made public-except occasionally for reasons such as national security when the release is delayed. Finally, public inquiries have advisory powers only; they can only recommend, not take action on their proposals. Public inquiries exclude consultancies, parliamentary backbench committees, internal public service project teams and inter-departmental committees, permanent advisory bodies such as the Productivity Commission, and parliamentary committees.

Most public inquiries, except for Royal Commissions and a small number of other inquiries, are not appointed under specific legislation and have no formal powers to call witnesses or to seek evidence. Instead, they usually rely on the prestige of their appointment by the relevant minister, public perceptions of the importance of their topic and the expertise of their membership to promote participation and support for their investigations. Consequently, inquiries will not receive the level of cooperation required if key stakeholders are reluctant to participate in the inquiry process, as was the case with the 1980 Independent Inquiry into Domestic Airline Deregulation. Public inquiries may be subject to judicial review, and may need court rulings on such things as admissibility and production of evidence.

While Royal Commissions were the main form of public inquiry until the 1930s, there has since then been a gradual increase in other forms of public inquiries. Until the 1970s public inquiry numbers declined, then stabilised. Their numbers then increased dramatically in 1972, following the election of the Whitlam Labor government, which appointed eight Royal Commissions and nearly seventy other public inquiries. This increased use of public inquiries, especially those other than Royal Commissions, was sustained by the subsequent Fraser, Hawke, and Keating governments and, to a lesser extent, the Howard government. Of the 500 inquiries (not Royal Commissions) appointed by the Commonwealth since Federation, more than 400 were formed after 1972. Similar increases in public inquiry numbers did not occur overseas. At the state level these inquiries have been less prevalent.

Although public inquiries have been most strongly associated with Labor administrations, especially the Whitlam government, the Fraser Liberal–National Coalition government, in its seven years in office, appointed more than ninety inquiries-more than the Whitlam government. Governments tend to appoint more inquiries during their first term in office than in later periods. For instance the Whitlam government appointed nearly 70 per cent of all its inquiries during its first term, the Howard government 44 per cent. Public inquiries have been appointed to investigate a wide range of public policy areas and will depend on government partisanship, current political agendas and particular events and crises. For instance the social reformist Whitlam Labor government appointed more inquiries on education and social issues; for the more pro-market Howard administration, more than 20 per cent of inquiries were into business and industry issues.

Public inquiries are appointed for a variety of reasons. They can assist in rational policy development by providing new information and research, give independent and expert analysis, and identify current knowledge on issues. Inquiries can also be deployed for more politically expedient reasons such as delaying or avoiding decision-making, co-opting opponents, manipulating the political agenda, ‘kite-flying’ issues to test public opinion, and using inquiry reports to justify policy actions already decided upon. However, determining government motives in appointing an inquiry is fraught with difficulty, given the executive nature of their origin.

Appointing inquiries is not without potential risk to government. Inquiries sometimes do not do what was intended. They may for example interpret their terms of reference widely and roam into unexpected areas that embarrass the government. Such was the case with the Royal Commission into the Activities of the Federated Ship Painters’ and Dockers’ Union (Costigan Royal Commission) originally appointed by the Fraser Liberal government to investigate a trade union and possibly to embarrass the federal Labor opposition. Ultimately, the Costigan Royal Commission exposed massive tax avoidance, money laundering, and government incompetence and corruption, adversely affecting the Fraser government and key Liberal Party organisational members. In other cases inquiries may just fail to do their task effectively if the members are inept, the research methodology flawed, or the conclusions indecisive.

Public inquiries have sometimes exerted considerable influence. The 1979 Campbell Committee of Inquiry into the Australian Financial System not only helped place financial deregulation firmly on the policy agenda but exerted a long-term impact on this area. It provided a rationale for initiation of financial deregulation in Australia and helped overcome considerable institutional resistance both within and outside government.

Over time governments have developed a variety of techniques to manage inquiries. Inquiries may be given limited terms of reference and inappropriate reporting time frames to limit their investigations. Inquiry reports can be ignored by governments; in some cases their reports are openly attacked. Governments can also appear to accept inquiry proposals but then establish elaborate processes to ‘implement’ their recommendations that slow down or hijack the inquiry agenda.

Despite government having an increasingly compliant public service to provide advice and an array of other sources such as ministerial minders and consultants, public inquiries continue to be appointed in Australia in considerable numbers. This reflects the particular public qualities of inquiries, which make them one of the few instruments governments now have at their disposal that can provide expert advice and be seen and accepted as such by the general community.