Who’s who on caucus committees: the full list

Yesterday in the ALP Caucus meeting, caucus chairman Daryl Melham presented a paper on the ALP’s caucus committee system. David Crowe picked up on the significance of the presentation and writes about it in today’s AFR.

Caucus committees — the Coalition had a similar backbench committee system — ostensibly must consider bills before they are introduced by Ministers, allowing backbenchers to stay in touch with Government business and provide a political reality check. It doesn’t necessarily work, as WorkChoices illustrated under the previous Government — although in that case, as Joe Hockey famously admitted, not even Cabinet Ministers understood the WorkChoices legislation.

Crowe’s report touches on backbench concerns about Ministers sidelining committees. For urgent bills, Caucus/backbench committee consideration is a pain for everyone, given the need to schedule members to attend a meeting and their inevitable complaints about not being given sufficient time to consider what can be complex legislation, often hot off the word processors of the drafters at the Office of Parliamentary Counsel.

But at least a Labor Government doesn’t have the problem of backbench floor-crossers like Barnaby Joyce who need to be cajoled and entreated to stay inside the tent. Only people who’ve been through the drafting and passage of controversial legislation fully understand the meaning of Bismarck’s lament: “To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.”

Melham instructed caucus members not to distribute the committee membership lists, as these were internal ALP documents. Such documents would be, as Crowe notes in his article, of very great interest to lobbyists who could use the committees as a possible choke point for unwanted legislation.

Crowe says that several lobbyists already have the lists. In Crikey’s view, this sort of information should not be confined to a select few influential players.

So here’s the list, or at least the version from earlier in the year when Robert Ray was still about: