Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Honourable senators, it is with deep regret that I inform you of the death earlier this month of Harry Evans, former Clerk of the Senate from 1988 until 2009. He was the longest-serving Clerk in the Senate's history. I call the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Abetz.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Employment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate records its deep regret at the death, earlier this month, of Harry Evans, Clerk of the Senate from 1988 to 2009, places on record its appreciation of his long and meritorious service to the Parliament of Australia, and particularly to the Senate, and tenders its profound sympathy to his family in their bereavement.

I am confident to say that the late Mr Harry Evans would not want a motion of condolence to be moved in this place, but I am equally confident that it is appropriate and right that we do this today, the very first sitting day since the news of his death, because of the singular contribution he made to the institution that is the Australian Senate. It is a consequence of the relatively high turnover of this chamber that many current honourable senators would not have worked with former Clerk Evans, but I am sure all will be aware of his authoritative writings and his high public profile, as he saw it, as a protector and defender of the Senate.

Harry Evans joined the Department of the Senate from the Parliamentary Library in 1969. As President Hogg said on the eve of the Clerk's retirement from the Clerk's chair in 2009, the reason Harry was recruited was that the then Clerk, Jim Odgers, had noticed the quality of Harry Evans's prose. It was a very fortunate recruitment. Mr Evans went on to steadily move through various offices of the Senate, eventually becoming a Clerk Assistant and then Deputy Clerk. In 1988 he became Clerk of the Senate just before the parliament moved up the hill into its new and permanent home. He served for a record of 21 years as Clerk of the Senate and head of the Department of the Senate. This is a record that will never be eclipsed because of the statutory limit of 10 years introduced in 1999.

Clerk Evans was a champion of the rights of individual senators. He had served as secretary of the Standing Committee on Regulations and Ordinances and helped the committee develop its noble reputation as being a guardian against the excessive use of executive and delegated power by governments. He also set up the Procedure Office as a response to the increasing number of senators who did not represent the major political parties. While the current make-up of the Senate presents a challenge to all of us, I have no doubt that Clerk Evans would have revelled at the prospect and would have been delighted to see the steady growth of the size of the crossbench because he saw it as a part of the necessary handbrake on executive domination of the parliament.

It is important, however, for me to note, as someone who as a minister worked very closely with Clerk Evans, that while he propounded strong and well-argued views on the role of the executive and the importance of the Senate maintaining its powers of scrutiny, he was equally encouraging of senators from major parties pursuing their own approach and he was an adviser without parallel when senators got themselves into sticky procedural situations, as occasionally happens I am informed.

Clerk Evans rewrote the Senate standing orders into the readable and concise set of rules that govern us today and, if anyone has read some of the standing orders of the state houses of parliament, we can be very thankful that what we have is much clearer and straightforward. He also consolidated and edited several editions of our Senate practice, which he renamed to honour his own mentor, Jim Odgers. That is now a ready and valuable reference in this parliament and, indeed, many other legislatures.

Clerk Evans was regarded as the doyen of the clerks not only in Australia and the Pacific but also further afield and he was especially highly regarded by the clerks or parliamentary officers of other upper houses in the parliamentary democracies of the world. He was an authority on the Federation debates and keenly aware that our founding fathers in writing the Australian Constitution did not blindly follow the British prescript but also included elements from the United States such as equal representation of all the states in the Senate regardless of population, and even Switzerland, which provided some of the basis for our federal referendum provisions. Clerk Evans was also a particular authority on, and fan of, a founding father from my own state Andrew Inglis Clark whose affinity with North America played much of a role in the drafting of our Constitution. Clerk Evans's legacy is the strong and robust Senate we have today. It is not one that the person occupying the chair of the leader of the government always enjoys, but it is the legacy that all of us who value the Senate cherish.

Harry Evans loved the position of words. He loved the quiet and grandeur of the Australian bush. Above all he cherished the Australian Senate and loved his family. It is to them that we turn our minds today. Because of illness Harry was robbed of the long retirement that he had so richly earned. To his wife, Rhonda, their sons, Ben and Sam, and their daughter, Beth, we offer our sincerest condolences. We will never see the like of Harry Evans again, but this place is all the better for the monumental contribution he made to the parliament of Australia.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on behalf of the opposition to express our sadness and our condolences at the passing of Mr Harry Evans earlier this month. At the outset I want to extend our sympathy to the family of Mr Evans and to those closest to him as they mourn his loss. As we know, Mr Evans was a private man but a public figure—indeed, an extraordinary parliamentary officer over a career that began in a parliamentary library in 1967 and continued in the Department of the Senate from 1969.

As Senator Abetz has said, his length of service as Clerk of the Senate over 21 years, commencing in the Old Parliament House and concluding here in 2009, is extraordinary. No individual has served the Senate longer, not even those such as John Ernest Edwards or James Rowland Odgers, who are recognised in our most significant publications—and, presumably, with changes to legislation in the late nineties to limit the tenure of the Clerk to one single 10-year turn, this record is unlikely to be surpassed.

In 1946, journalist Warren Denning wrote:

Without its permanent administrative officials, Parliament would be a rudderless ship, a ship of state with many captains, lots of passengers, but no crew.

Mr Evans was a peerless administrative leader in his time, a man of great integrity who guided senators in the Senate as he navigated many challenges throughout his career. He was well known as a champion of the rights and legislative powers of our chamber and our parliamentary democracy. He recognised the role that the Senate can play as a crucial check in a system where the executive has enormous power, against which the Senate is sometimes the only constitutional safeguard; and he helped the Senate discover ways in which to assert its rightful legislative authority against executive overreach. He had a strong appreciation of the intent of the framers of the Constitution for the role and function of the Senate. In his parliamentary paper in 2009 on The role of the Senate, he said:

Governments are supposed to be accountable to parliament, and through parliament to the electorate …

Under the cabinet system, however, governments normally control lower houses through disciplined party majorities. Lower houses are not able to hold governments accountable, because governments simply use their majority to limit debate and inquiry in relation to their activities. Indeed, governments use their lower house majorities to suppress and limit accountability. They thereby seek to conceal their mistakes and misdeeds and prevent the electorate passing an informed judgement.

In this situation, upper houses not controlled by the government of the day are the only avenue for accountability to parliament.

He went on to say:

A reviewing house without power over legislation would be ineffective. This is why the framers gave the Senate full legislative powers.

In the face of strong views occasionally expressed about the Senate and its role by leaders of my own party and by others which are well known, Mr Evans was always stoic in his defence of this chamber, its rights and its responsibilities.

As Senator Abetz has said, one of Mr Evans's most substantial contributions was through the editing of seven editions of Odgers' Australian Senate Practice, beginning in 1995 with a substantial revision of this work. The fact that it continues to be the authoritative publication not just on Senate procedures but on foundation principles of the Australian Constitution—of particular relevance to this chamber—and federalism, bicameralism and the separation of powers is a tribute not just to the efforts of Harry Evans but to his knowledge and interest in the ongoing exposition of the place of the Senate in our country's system of government.

In a debate in the other place during budget deliberations in 1932, there was some discussion about the salaries of high-level public servants. In the context of that debate, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Sir Littleton Groom, recognised the high degree of scholarship required of the Clerk, saying:

Even persons eminent in the legal profession would not attempt to pose as experts in parliamentary practice and procedure.

Fortunately, Harry Evans was not only a man of a high degree of scholarship and an expert in parliamentary practice and procedure but also a gentleman.

I count myself as extraordinarily privileged to have had the opportunity to know Harry Evans professionally over his last seven years in the Senate, after I took my seat in this place in 2002, and I, like many others, sought his advice on many occasions. Any person who served as a senator during his period as Clerk—and there were over 300 of us; 304, I think, in his 40 years of parliamentary service—would recognise that as a parliamentary officer Mr Evans was without peer. So too would the staff of senators and of the Department of the Senate who worked with and alongside him. Those who have arrived here since 2009 would recognise the legacy of his own work as Clerk that lives on not just in his writings but in the standards of competence and professionalism he instilled in those who continue to serve us today.

We mourn today and honour the passing of one of this country's greatest servants of democracy. Harry Evans exemplified the high standards and ideals of this Senate. We honour his service to this chamber and, through it, to the nation and the Australian people. We reiterate our sympathies to his family.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today on behalf of the Australian Greens to support and join the condolence that has already been expressed by the Leader of the Government and the Leader of the Labor Party here in the Senate. I was one of those who was fortunate enough to serve in the Senate when Harry Evans was here as the Clerk. He was a private person and a humble person, but he brought his considerable intellect and scholarship to the service of this country, and that is what he will be remembered for—for strengthening our democracy by the fierce stand he took for the rightful role of the Senate in our parliamentary democracy.

He first arrived in 1969 and he described the Senate of that time in this context:

… every constitutional, parliamentary and procedural issue launched a bevy of appeals to the Westminster model. Whatever was allegedly done at Westminster was thought to be our infallible guide.

…   …   …

Nowadays invocations of Westminster are only occasionally made, and lack the air of authority they once had. We now appeal to general principles of governance and our own practices.

He was a staunch believer not only in the independence and power of the Senate but in the need to constantly improve the practices that suit Australian governance. He wanted to ensure that the Australian parliament stood for and reflected in Australia the values that we think are important in this country and that they be reflected in parliamentary practice.

He also understood the difficulties faced by those who are elected to the Senate as independents or in parties other than the two parties of government and opposition. So not only did he rewrite Odgers' but he brought in a series of reforms and changes that have been of immeasurable value to those of us who are in third parties or are independents. For example, he recognised the need for procedural advice and access to parliamentary drafting services. He brought about the changes that enabled everybody to access that advice. I think I can speak on behalf of everybody in recognising just how important that procedural advice is for everyone. He also brought in the practice of the referral of bills. The system that we now operate under was one that he designed. It makes for efficient and, I think, independent but fair processes for discussion of how bills are referred and how the system should work.

He was a fierce champion of the Senate sitting in its rightful constitutional place—that is, supreme over the executive government. He referred once to the executive's wish for committees to be 'feedlot animals kept under close control and supervision'. So he stood very firmly for the Senate's rights under sections 53 and 57 of the Constitution. Later, in referring to the executive in one of his papers, he wrote:

Here the executive government not only controls the legislature but exercises an iron discipline over it. This is particularly obvious in lower houses around the country, where the executive totally dominates and absolutely controls those houses, to the extent that the legislative function is virtually killed off.

That is why he advocated so strongly for the power of upper houses to actually scrutinise.

His lasting legacy, apart from the tremendous assistance he gave to every senator who served in this place while he was the Clerk, is, of course, his body of writing. I recommend that people read some of Harry Evans's papers. I will read the titles of some of them, to give you a sense of the breadth of his contribution: 'The government majority in the Senate: A nail in the coffin of responsible government?', 'Accountability and corporate governance in the new parliament', 'The Senate, accountability and government control', 'The Australian parliament: Time for reformation', 'The intertwined history of Canberra and the parliament', 'Constitutionalism, bicameralism and control of power', 'Elections: Constitutional complexities and consequences', 'Ethics and Public Service governance'—and on it goes. There is a great deal to be learned about the history of parliamentary democracy and its practice here in Australia from the academic writings of Harry Evans. I think his lasting advice to us all were the words he gave when he spoke of 'restraint of the executive by a stronger legislature'. That is his advice to all of us. In paying my respects to Harry and acknowledging his contribution to Australia because of his strengthening of the Senate and our democracy, I also convey our condolences to his wife, Rhonda, and to his children, Ben, Sam and Beth.

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to offer the Nationals and my own most sincere condolences to Mrs Rhonda Evans and her family.

Harry Evans was an institution in the Australian parliamentary system, a man of rare abilities who put them to the service of his country. In 1967 Harry commenced as a librarian in training with the Parliamentary Library on a salary of just $3,239 per year. By 1969 he had come to the attention of the legendary Jim Odgers, Clerk of the Senate, who wanted to bring out a new edition of his Australian Senate Practice. Odgers was looking for a good researcher to work with him on a project; Harry, with his strong interest in history applied for and got a job. It is this promotion that set up his mastery of Senate practice, and 40 years of it. Harry was one of the finest of the new Clerk Assistants and was responsible for the Committee Office until he returned to the Procedure Office in 1985 before being promoted to Deputy Clerk in 1987. In 1998 he was promoted to Clerk of the Senate.

It is the mark of a man that his retirement should occasion a glowing farewell in the usually dry annual report of the Department of the Senate 2009-10. I would like to read an extract from this, which said:

After more than 40 years of service to the Senate, Harry Evans’s contribution can be measured in much greater terms than simply time served. A renowned expert on parliamentary privilege, Harry was the principal critic of the judgments of Mr Justice Cantor and Mr Justice Hunt in the case of R v Murphy which were the catalyst for the enactment of the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987. His next challenge was to rationalise the Senate’s standing orders, transforming them—

as we have already heard today from what some would describe as—

… a somewhat antiquated and motley collection into a rational body of rules written in plain English and appropriate for a modern parliament. While the revised standing orders were a codification of existing practice, they contain many examples of Harry’s formidable capacity for reducing complicated things to simple and crystal clear prescriptions.

The report goes on:

There are many other examples of his ability to devise and draft procedures to give effect to senators’ desires to see the Senate performing its functions more effectively. Also formidable is Harry’s body of writing on parliamentary matters. In 1994, he produced a new version of the classic text, Australian Senate Practice, renamed as Odgers’ Australian Senate Practice after its first author and Clerk of the Senate from 1965 to 1979, James Rowland (Jim) Odgers. During his time as Clerk of the Senate, Harry produced six editions of this major parliamentary work, ensuring the availability of the most up-to-date information about the evolving Senate, its constitutional position and its procedures. ‘The Book’, as he fondly called it, remains as a testament to his endeavours to promote the institution of Parliament, and the Senate in particular, as one of the last bulwarks against executive domination. A collection of his other writings was published in February 2010 as a special issue of the department’s journal, Papers on Parliament.

Senators paid tribute to their retiring Clerk on 19 November 2009 and a recurring theme was the independence and impartiality which Harry Evans brought to the performance of his office and the fearlessness with which he defended the powers and role of the Senate. While his advice was not always appreciated by governments, Harry achieved the distinction of being criticised by governments of all complexions and—

equally, I suspect—

respected by all.

The department's annual report also says:

As a chief executive officer, Harry Evans also represented the highest standards of ethical leadership, probity and the pursuit of value for money on behalf of the taxpayer. The Senate committee inquiry process remains one of the most cost-effective means of scrutinising governments’ policies, operations and legislative proposals, and the Committee Office operates at a fraction of the cost of such agencies as the Productivity Commission or the Australian National Audit Office.

Our current Clerk, Rosemary Laing, said:

Harry was a shy and modest man who led by example. We remember him as a generous mentor to those of us who wanted to learn about the Senate and its procedure. As an administrator, he was not afraid to make a decision and his efficiency in clearing paperwork was legendary. He also possessed a wry sense of humour that many of his colleagues will long remember.

Harry Evans was an astute observer of the parliamentary system, saying in his last Senate lecture in 2009:

Knowledge has always been power, but the management of information has become the key to government.

I came to this place at the same time as the Leader of the Opposition, in 2002. Almost immediately after taking my place in parliament, Harry brought to my attention that it was likely that I was in conflict with section 44 of the Constitution. He was more excited about this than I was, but I must acknowledge that his knowledge of the system assisted me in getting through three years of my term with that hanging over my head. There were a whole range of convolutions surrounding that issue and it was only Harry who was able to guide me through them. He also gave me some simple advice: 'In this place, Nigel, we are not sure what will happen. As long as you are open and frank with the Senate, it will treat you well.' I had three miserable years, but his advice, at the end of the day, was right on the money. I was certainly shocked to hear that Harry had passed away. It seems too soon for a man who had become an institution to leave us all behind. Vale, Harry Evans.

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I ask senators to stand in assent to the motion, I will just add some comments myself which go to the loyalty of Harry as Clerk of the Senate. Typical of him, I think, is that he retired on Friday, 4 December, and on the following Monday appeared back before the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee. I thought that was testimony to the man. As another example, he took sick leave in his first year as Clerk in 1988—and never required sick leave again for 20-odd years. I think that again typifies the loyalty of the man to the Senate.

I also discovered that he was a shooter of some note. He used to like to shoot game—mainly rabbits. There is a recipe, which I am sure you can obtain from the Clerk's office, about how to cook the finest rabbit. Some of the comments in the recipe are quite humorous. In extending my sympathies to Harry's family, I also, on behalf of all senators, extend them to the Clerk, the Deputy Clerk and all of the people in the Senate who worked very closely with Harry. They were his second family. I know the Clerk's office has particularly felt this at this time.

Question agreed to, honourable senators standing in their places.