22nd Mar 2023, 3:47 PM – Senate Documents - Leader of the Government in the Senate - Order for the Production of Documents

The majority voted against a motion:

That—

(1) There be laid on the table by the Leader of the Government in the Senate, no later than 5 sitting days after 1 January, 1 April, 1 July and 1 October each year, a letter of advice that all ministers' official appointments diaries, covering the periods 1 October to 31 December, 1 January to 31 March, 1 April to 30 June and 1 July to 30 September respectively, in accordance with paragraph (2), have been published on a single government website.

(2) The official appointment diaries referred to in paragraph (1) must indicate:

(a) each meeting (regardless of format) held by the Minister with external persons who seek to influence government policy or decisions; a meeting with external persons does not include:

(i) internal meetings held by ministers exclusively with other federal ministers and/or federal ministerial staff and/or federal government officials,

(ii) strictly personal meetings,

(iii) electorate meetings,

(iv) party political meetings, or

(v) public or strictly social events;

(b) the attendees at each meeting, including:

(i) the name(s) of the individual(s),

(ii) organisation name(s),

(iii) where an individual attends a meeting in a non-official capacity and does not represent any organisation, the individual's name, except where publication of the individual's name could cause harm to the individual (eg a whistleblower's name or a police informant's name), and

(iv) where a third-party lobbyist is present at a meeting, the name of the lobbying firm, the name of any personnel present at the meeting and the name of the client on whose behalf the third-party lobbyist is present;

(c) a brief description of the topic or purpose of the meeting (however, the topic or purpose of the meeting does not need to be disclosed where there is an overriding public interest against disclosure, in which case the nature of the harm must be provided); and

(d) the city or town where the meeting occurred, and:

(i) where publicly funded travel is involved, for travel outside of the Australian Capital Territory or beyond 30 km of the Minister's normal electoral office—the mode of transport (eg regular public transport flight, special purpose flight, charter flight, Comcar, hire car, etc), and

(ii) where meeting attendee funded travel is involved—the mode of transport (eg charter flight, private flight, chauffeur driven car, etc).

(3) This order takes effect from 1 April 2023 and is of continuing effect.

Read more about these types of motions on the parliamentary website.