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  John Campbell

 Person: John Campbell

Former Parliamentary Clerk.
  Q1. What does a parliamentary Clerk do?
 
JC. The job of a parliamentary Clerk has evolved over hundreds of years. Originally the Clerk kept the rolls in Parliament in England about 600 years ago. In those days Members of Parliament were often illiterate so the Clerk also had the job of actually reading out the content of petitions and bills because some of the Members couldn’t read them for themselves. This, of course, is the origin of the first, second and third reading of a bill. These days, fortunately, the Clerk doesn’t have to read them out in full. He does read a number of things. He calls the orders of the day, which is really the items of business on the notice paper. He records the proceedings of Parliament, including rulings from the Chair. He prepares the notice paper which is the agenda for the Parliament, he assists Members with procedural advice. Particularly and of course, he is the principal officer who advises and supports the Speaker. He helps to draft standing orders of procedure and particularly assists new Members to master the intricacies of procedure. Procedure can be rather overwhelming for a newcomer, and one of the roles of the Clerk is to assist new Members to come to an understanding of how the place works.
The Clerk actually takes charge of the proceedings of the House at one stage and that is the election of the Speaker. When you don’t have a Speaker then the Clerk conducts the election of Speaker. The Clerk also heads up a staff of about 50 people to look after the administration of the House and to staff the committees of which the House has quite a few. Of course, the Clerk is adviser to the Speaker. Those are the main duties. One has other duties, but they are the principal ones.
 
Q2. And how did you get to be a Clerk?
 
JC. It was about 51 years ago actually that I applied for a vacancy on the parliamentary staff. After being interviewed by the then Clerk and the Speaker I was appointed. Now, officers of Parliament are governed by special legislation in Victoria which sets them apart from the rest of the public service and makes it quite clear that their duty is to be officers of the Parliament, not officers of the government of the day. When one joins the parliamentary staff as a permanent officer promotion is then by seniority and merit combined. The duty of the Clerk in Parliament can perhaps best be illustrated by something from history, way back in the time of Charles I. When there was this great struggle between King and Parliament, Charles I. came with a party of armed men to arrest five members while the commons were sitting, five Members who had offended him in what they’d had to say. He sought the assistance of the Speaker - Speaker Lenthall to help him find the Members and Lenthall made clear he was a servant of the House and the King was unable to arrest the five Members. Shortly afterwards, of course, the civil war broke out, but that’s another story.

But the role of the Clerk, Rushworth was a Clerk at the table, and he mastered a primitive form of shorthand. He wrote down all that the King said and all that the Speaker said and recorded the proceedings verbatim. King Charles sent for Rushworth and asked him to hand over his notes. Rushworth refused, gave the King a copy but kept his original, the point being that he was a servant of Parliament, not the King. Today the Clerks are the servants of Parliament. After many years of study and passing through various positions, such as Serjeant at Arms and various other roles, I became Clerk of the Assembly at the rather young age of 44 due to circumstances beyond my control and I remained as an officer of Parliament for some 36 years. That was how I came into the position of being a Clerk.
 
Q3. Who were you primarily responsible to?
 
JC. The Speaker of the House.
 
Q4. What is parliamentary procedure and how do you go about advising the Speaker and Members of Parliament on parliamentary procedure?
 
JC. Parliamentary procedure is concerned with the practices and the rules governing debate and conduct of business. It's based upon the procedure that's evolved in the English House of Commons over hundreds of years. In fact, even today quite a number of Clerks in parliaments in the British Commonwealth do go on exchange or attachment to the House of Commons to further their studies of procedure.

The presiding officer, the Speaker, upholds and enforces the rules and particularly protects the individual rights of members - the freedom of speech and various other things which are essential to the proper functioning of Parliament. It's his role to enforce the rules and see that the game is played according to those rules; rather like an umpire, if you like. The source of practice and procedure in Parliament is firstly in Victoria, our Constitution Act; secondly, the standing orders and rules that the House itself has had to govern its proceedings, and then the rulings given by the Speaker - rulings on important issues - are a guide to the Speaker in future. So, you can see that coming from all these various different sources the rules are quite complex and in case of doubt we have recourse to the procedures of the House of Commons. The object of it all is fairness and consistency, to ensure relevance and proper conduct and to have clearly defined rights for members who are participating in debate.

The question of how I went about advising on procedure: firstly, the Clerk is available to all members of all parties and the newest backbencher, irrespective of party or position. The Clerk is there to be of assistance to all Members in relation to procedure. For example, questions on notice that are asked in the House and motions that are made in the House, the Clerk studies them to see if they are admissible and in accordance with the rules of the house and will give advice on those matters. But the Clerk doesn’t rule on things, the Speaker rules on them. The Clerk advises and assists with the preparation of various procedural matters and this is all done on the basis of confidentiality. The Clerk also helps the Standing Orders Committee which from time to time reviews the procedures with a view to improving them, and the Clerk keeps abreast of developments in other parliaments to see what innovations are taking place there and to be able to advise on possible procedural improvements. He particularly helps the Speaker in the house in relation to procedural issues. That's mainly the way that the Clerk is involved in advising and assisting in parliamentary procedural matters.
 
Q5. What was your relationship to the Speaker and what did he expect from you?
 
JC. Firstly, the most important thing in the relationship between Speaker and Clerk is mutual respect and trust. The Speaker has a very demanding role in any Parliament as the presiding officer in what is sometimes a difficult environment, one that makes great demands on the Chair sometimes. In the Australian parliaments the Speaker is also in a position where considerable demands are made upon him because he is an elected member with a responsibility to his electorate and he will have to contest at the next election if he wants to remain a Member. Whereas in England, the Speaker has a rather more detached position in that it's a practice that the major parties don’t oppose the Speaker at the next election.

But, when the Speaker is in the Chair, he has to be objective, fair and worthy of the respect that the Chair attracts. If he's in the unenviable position where there is virtually a hung House, then he may have to give a casting vote. In my time one of the Speakers did have to give many casting votes because of the narrow balance between the Opposition and the Government parties in the House. That's a very heavy responsibility and in doing that, the Speaker traditionally follows precedent and, for example, gives as much further opportunity as possible for the House to consider before a final decision is made, casting his vote in a way that will enable further opportunity if that's possible. The Speaker has very heavy responsibilities and the Clerk is there to support and advise and help him in performing his role. What the Speaker expects of the Clerk is, of course, loyalty, frankness - one has to be able to give advice without fear or favour - and confidentiality. What passes between the Speaker and the Clerk is in confidence. Also, the Speaker expects of the Clerk a good knowledge of Parliament and its workings and the respect for the institution itself, desire to uphold the best traditions of the Parliament and also integrity. The Clerk will be expected to research and advise on various matters and then the Speaker will be the one who rules in the House if there is an issue to be ruled upon.

It’s a very close working relationship between the two people. And it's worked very well in my opinion and my experience with a change of party, different Speaker and so on - it doesn’t present any problems because of the nature of the relationship.
 
Q6. How did you balance the role between service to the Parliament and service to the Government?
 
JC. I didn't find this difficult. Firstly, the Clerk’s position is generally understood amongst Members - that he is there to help all Members and he works with the Leader of the House to help the flow of business, but equally he'll work with Members of all parties. The biggest problem I think at times is the pressure on time on a day when the House is due to meet. So many different people want advice and assistance it becomes very much a team job where the Clerk is supported by a team of people and is able to provide service to the various people who are making conflicting demands on time and assistance. Sometimes the advice of the Clerk gives doesn't suit the Government and that’s the nature of the job, and that's well understood. Whereas somebody from the Government might privately say to you, 'Why is it so?', you'll explain and may agree to differ, you're approaching an issue from different positions. But it's well understood that the Clerk's role is to be quite objective, non-political and to base his advice on established practice and the rules. I didn't really find that difficult, in fact. There were times when you agonised over something to work out whether you really had come up with the right advice, but you had others to double check what you were doing and you put a lot of effort in sometimes to researching. It was not a problem in my view.
 
Q7. How did you maintain political objectivity in your role?
 
JC. Firstly, if you're Clerk of the House then I found that any personal political views you had on matters of party controversy, matters that were currently very much in argument, you kept to yourself. You were very careful not to express your own personal views if you had any, because that would appear to jeopardise your objectivity. I knew a Clerk before me who even went to the length of not voting in Elections for state Parliament, which is a view I totally disagree with, because with secret ballot, we all have a responsibility to vote and to vote responsibly when elections come. But the Clerk really believed that his objectivity, to him, was of so much importance that he voted informal at elections. I didn't go to those lengths but I didn't express publicly views on matters of political controversy.

Secondly, I found it wasn't really difficult because what happens, you become so absorbed in the practice and law of Parliament, which is quite a big area of study itself, and the application of that and researching it, that that was what you focused on and not the merits of a particular issue.

Oddly enough - this is a controversial issue - but personally I found that to have to put the uniform on before one went into the House when the House met, reminded me that I put aside my personal feelings and that I stepped into a role where I was objective and analytical and was serving the Parliament. It just reminded me that Campbell the person was left behind in the background and that you were the Clerk of the House and that you were taking on the responsibilities and the objectivity that went with that particular position. Not everyone would agree with that, it's controversial, but to me it was a reminder.

The other thing is Members come to realise that, just as you respect their confidence, and you give them unbiased advice - which sometimes may not suit them, but will help them to decide how they are going to approach a problem - they come to realise that if you do that for them, likewise, they would expect you to be the same with everybody else and those who think about it wouldn't want it to be otherwise.

The next point is that if you are going to be a servant of the House in a role such as the Clerk of the House, objectivity is essential. Without it you will soon lose respect. Objectivity is vital to the proper functioning of the Parliament in our system where there are officers who are there - it's part of the democratic process in my view - just as I believe when new members came in, if they weren't helped to understand the intricacies, then it was undemocratic. They couldn't represent their electors properly if they didn’t know how the mechanisms worked. So, I felt that whatever their party, whatever their beliefs, that this objective service to all is essential, and if you are not able to achieve that because you've got political hang-ups, then you shouldn't be in that role.

The other thing is that one doesn't become Clerk of the House overnight and these attitudes are inculcated over years of training and working within the system and soaking up the background to it. I didn’t really find it difficult to maintain political objectivity. I suppose the fact that I had been a Clerk of Courts before I became an officer of Parliament also helped me because I learnt that there are often two sides to a story and that what often appears to be black or white is various shades of grey. So that rather helps you to be objective.
 
Q8. What was involved in your day?
 
JC. On a sitting day the first thing, together with other officers, I would have studied the media to see what sort of issues there are that are current which are likely to have a spin-off in the House. Often there would be something which is very much in the news which is likely to lead to something in the House. Then we would begin to research the possible procedural methods by which the issue could be raised and what would be the possible procedural problems.

Then before the House met we would arrange the papers and the various other documents that were needed for Parliament. We would sort out the sequence of the various procedures and we would prepare all the paper work just like a secretary to a meeting does in society, whether it's a yacht club, a golf club or whatever it is.

We would prepare all that paper work for the House. We would prepare for the Speaker the bits of paper that he would need to handle the various procedures that we knew were going to arise and we would assist Members who wanted to prepare motions, questions and all that sort of thing. We would examine the bills and the amendments and the motions and the various matters that were going to come before the House to see what procedural problems they presented and what sequence they would be taken in and which ones would preclude others.

The Clerk would have a pre-sitting briefing with the Speaker which was quite an important part of each day's sitting where we would try and foresee the issues that were likely to arise and discuss the procedural aspects and various other problems that may arise for the Chair. Then in the sitting itself there was always the possibility of unexpected matters arising - the mood of the house can change instantly. Something can come up quite unexpectedly - maybe a problem of behaviour, someone might have to be suspended, all sorts of things can arise. You have to be available to advise the Chair and to advise the Minister and anyone else on what may arise during the proceedings.

The other important role of course, is as I was referring to with Rushworth in the Commons - recording the proceedings, recording the voting, the decisions that are made. Of course, in this respect, one is helped by a number of other officers, the Clerk doesn’t do all this personally. Those are mainly the things that happen. Sometimes the day in Parliament may be very long. The longest sitting that I ever experienced was 22 hours, which is utterly exhausting, but this sort of thing has happened on odd occasions and it’s partly tied up with the competition for time and the pressure on time and the various other issues that seem to be inherent in Parliament.
 
Q9. What sort of behind-the-scene agreements go on between members of the opposing parties and members of the same party and you?
 
JC. Firstly, Parliament is very much a place of conflict; conflict of ideas and policies and so on with great pressures on time. Behind the scenes there are many agreements reached between the parties about the way in which they will handle the business and what they will give priority to and that sort of thing, and also in the House itself while the House is sitting, the managers of business for the various parties will reach various agreements. It’s not always the case that they agree; sometimes it will be contested in the House. The Clerks are not directly involved in the process of making these agreements, coming to these agreements, in most cases. But when the issue is resolved that we are going to do item A instead of item B and that So-and-so will move such-and-such an amendment, then the Clerk’s role is to help facilitate the outcome and see that all the paperwork and procedural aspects are prepared and in place. That’s basically how that works. Quite a lot of agreement goes on across party barriers and often it does help the better working of the House, but it doesn’t always occur.
 
Q10. How did you manage this situation?
 
JC. Firstly, the Clerk needs to have a competent, well-trained and knowledgeable staff and needs to be able and prepared to delegate. You can’t do everything yourself. Secondly, you work very closely in cooperation with Parliamentary Counsel, who drafts the bills. You work with others closely, such as the Government Printer and so on, and a lot of it is liaison. But, again it is very much a team job to ensure, as far as you can, that the proceedings run smoothly.
 
Q11. Historically, what is Parliament meant to do?
 
JC. Parliament has a number of roles. Firstly, it's the supreme law-making body within its constitutional powers. Secondly, it is deliberative body; a debating organ. It has been said that it substitutes the force of argument for the argument of force. This deliberative role of discussing, debating important issues dates back hundreds of years and it can be traced back a very long time in British history. It still is a quite important role in Parliament. It's a place where the elected representatives of the people can debate important issues. The third role, which certainly evolved as a result of great historical struggle, is that of control of the executive - the Government of the day.

Hundreds of years ago the King ruled with the advice of his Ministers and advisers, and there was a great struggle between the House of Commons and the King as to whether the King's Ministers were accountable to the House of Commons. Eventually in the course of resolving all this King Charles lost his head, but that's another story. The outcome of it was that in summary a Government in our system can only govern if it has the majority support in the popularly elected Lower House of Parliament and it will be accountable and subject to scrutiny and possible criticism for everything it does as a government. That's an essential role of Parliament to provide this control of the executive, as it is called, and also of course provides the personnel from which the executive of the Government of the day is chosen. They have to be elected as Members before they can become Ministers in the Government.

Another quite important role, and again one which has evolved over hundreds of years in England, is the financial power which is sometimes described as the power of the purse. Over years it evolved that the Commons insisted on having the right to criticise the way the King was spending money before it would grant him further money. He might be spending it on wars that they thought were unjustified or too expensive - it didn’t matter what. The King was not very happy about the House being critical of the way he spent money and yet, over a period it became quite clear that the Parliament has the power to criticise the activities of the Government and the way it handles its finances before it grants money.
In Victoria it is assisted by the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, which consists of Members of all parties, and also by the Auditor-General who objectively reports to Parliament.

There is a role not so commonly known, the judicial role, which it still has. It has power to discipline its own Members for misconduct and to deal with people who interfere with the proper functioning of Parliament - who molest Members in the execution of their duty, for example. It still has this power which I suppose summarises being a judicial role. Those are basically the roles that Parliament has and they have evolved as I have mentioned over a very long period. They are based really on the way in which they evolved in England.
 
Q12. Do you think that Parliament should be televised?
 
JC. Yes, I certainly do, but subject to safeguards. Firstly the visual media is one which can have tremendous impact on people and it's quite possible by selectively reporting what has been televised from Parliament and doing it in an unbalanced and biased way to misrepresent Parliament, to denigrate some important debate and to denigrate those who have made a contribution to it. Now Canada, which pioneered televising of Parliament, dealt with this problem by doing the actual filming of proceedings itself and allowing it to be used by various channels, subject to certain guidelines. If they didn’t comply with those guidelines, which were mainly concerned with balance and such like things, then they would be disentitled.

In Victoria the filming is not done by an organ of the Parliament itself, but there are strict guidelines as there are in Canada and they are enforced by the Speaker, who is assisted by the Serjeant-at-Arms. The TV staff are briefed and they know what is expected of them. If they infringe, then they can be reprimanded or in the final analysis, excluded. If I could put it this way; you could easily at 3 o’clock in the morning pan in on some exhausted guy who is asleep in the back bench and ignore some quite cogent argument of someone else which is of great importance and belittle and denigrate Parliament. There needs to be guidelines. Finally, my view about this issue is that the televising of Parliament can be a very valuable part of democratic process if it’s properly performed, and so I favour it subject to safeguards.
 
Q13. How does television of the Parliament affect or change the process of Parliament?
 
JC. Well, it came in after I retired but my view of it - and supported by what I have heard from others - is that it has not changed the process materially. One thing that the viewer should remember is this: that a 30-second grab from a very complex and lengthy debate which may have gone on for many hours on some great issue will not make the viewer an instant expert. It may be interesting, but to gain an in-depth idea of what the argument is all about one needs more than that. It may stimulate some people who want to read more about it and learn more about it, but I just put that as a note of warning to the viewer: don’t think because you’ve watched 30 seconds of some 5-hour debate on some great issue that you know most of what there is to know about it.
I still think that it's a good thing.

The only other point I would make about it is there is in it, I think, an inherent trap, if you like, or whatever you like to call it, something the viewer needs to be aware of. It can lead to the cult of personality where the appearance and delivery of a speaker who is on his feet talking about something may carry more weight than the weight of a more logical argument of somebody else in a debate. That's a question of how naive the viewer is, I suppose. But, I think in relation to the visual media it is a possible problem for the viewer unless they’re aware of it and, enough said. But, it really has not had a profound impact and Victoria and Australia have been fortunate in that it has had the experience of others to build on in deciding to what extent they will allow televising and what safeguards are needed. Others have pioneered the way on that which has made it helpful.
 
Q14. How has the process of Parliament changed?
 
JC. Since I have retired it has mainly changed in respect of technology, particularly information technology. The ability to store and retrieve information quickly, that has come with modern information technology and in-house printing, improved methods of communicating with other parliaments across the world.

Sometimes an issue arises and you may find that some other parliament has experience in this particular area, may have developed procedures and so on. Nowadays you can come up with the answers much more quickly. All of these things, I think, help towards the efficiency of the way in which the House can operate, but I would say that the changes that have resulted from these things are nowhere near as important as some of the great changes of the past.

Just to illustrate a couple of them, secret ballots for parliamentary elections. We have all grown up with that. We don’t realise how important it is, but if you can visualise having to vote publicly at a meeting where somebody might totally disagree with you and give you a hard time because of the way you voted, secret ballot is essential to our system and we can be proud of the fact that we helped to pioneer it for parliamentary elections here in Victoria. Oddly enough another great change was payment of members.

People might wonder why that is so important but it's important because it means that we don't have to be wealthy to become a Member of Parliament. Whereas before payment of members you had to have independent means to be able to afford to devote the time and energy just to be a member of Parliament.

Another very important change which I've seen in my time is the growth in the use of select committees which are all-party committees of Parliament which research issues, take evidence, hear submissions, weigh up issues and then make recommendations to Parliament. Victoria has been very much involved in this and we have had some very good work from our committees and that has been a great development in the process. For example, things like compulsory seat originated from the recommendations of committees representative of all members working within the select committee system.

There have been others which I won't go into detail about. All I am saying is: the developments in recent years resulting from technology and so on are not as important as some of the ones that have previously occurred.
 
Q15. What were some of your most memorable moments?
 
JC. That one's difficult to answer. Some of them are memorable because they were very sad, some of them are memorable because they were highly humorous, some of them are memorable because they were very anxious times. There is, by the way, quite a lot of humour that manifests itself from time to time and it provides very good light relief. Perhaps we could choose three that are particularly memorable to me and they are rather different in their nature.

One of the most memorable was in 1955 when members of the government defected in the House and voted against the Government and brought it down. It was a very dramatic occasion and one of the Members of the Government party threw a handful of coins on the floor of the chamber to relate it to Judas Iscariot's actions. Those coins were in the Clerk’s safe as a memento thereafter.

But that was a very, very dramatic occasion and it occurred during a long sitting along with other drama, which was preceded by a Minister resigning while the House was sitting because he disagreed with a matter of Government policy. Eventually this incident where a handful of coins was thrown on the floor of the house was really quite dramatic.

One of the other really memorable issues I remember, and I was quite involved in it, was in 1970 when the Westgate Bridge collapsed with a great loss of lives. The House was united in its grief and the bells were delayed, the House met late while consideration was given to what could best be done in this situation. As Clerk I conferred with the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Third Party and the result of it was a sort of joint action where the House acted together and the Leader of the Opposition was the one who moved the motion of condolence for those who died and their families. That was seconded by the Leader of the Third Party and the Premier moved that the House adjourn - which is the ultimate mark of respect it can give in a situation like this - that the House adjourn, out of respect for those who had lost their lives. That was quite a memorable occasion, one of those occasions when the whole House is united in its actions and feelings.

Another memorable occasion for me was a particular speech by a very well-known person, when in 1975 the then Premier decided to bring down legislation for the abolition of capital punishment which was a pretty controversial issue, and it was decided to allow a conscience vote on that. Members could line up according to their own views about it, and Barry Jones made a speech which was fairly long but quite remarkable in its content and quality and was remarked upon by Members of all parties as being quite outstanding. It was quite a magnificent speech, well crafted, full of good logic and a tremendous amount of information from the experience of other countries overseas and so on. So, that was one of my memorable experiences too.

I worked on exchange duty in the House of Commons for three months and I can remember particularly two experiences I had there. One day they loaned me a uniform and put me at the table to record the proceedings and I was welcomed from the Chair and welcomed by Members. That to me was quite a memorable experience because I was doing what the Clerks had done for hundreds of years over there and it was a great privilege to be invited to do that. But the other thing that was memorable while I was there was I was in the Speaker’s gallery on the day when a Minister had to resign because he jeopardised his position and put himself in a position where he could have been blackmailed and his resignation was announced to the House. The place was absolutely packed, the galleries were full, the chamber itself was full. It was for me quite memorable because what it was all about was the upholding of standards of conduct which in the system are regarded as essential if one’s going to hold high office. To be there and to actually see the way it was dealt with, with great firmness, great dignity, but with an upholding of traditions, the best traditions of Parliament, I found that quite memorable really. To me, all the years I spent as an officer of Parliament were memorable because it’s a very special environment and it’s a very special privilege to be working in that environment as an officer of Parliament.