Disgraceful response to questions over Federal Court expenses

We all learned last week that the Federal Court spends more than $100,000 a year catering judges’ social gatherings and special occasions.

Taxpayers fork out more than $40,000 each year on food and wine for the annual two-day national judges’ meetings.

As Region reported, the annual catering bill for the Federal Court amounted to $106,236 in the 2021-22 financial year; $173,114 for 2022-23; and $145,148 for the financial year that followed that one.

While those figures might attract a gasp or two from some – it is a lot of money, after all – the amount spent on wine and food to keep judges happy is by no means the most outrageous part of the story.

Quite frankly, you’d expect a bill for entertaining judges to be somewhat hefty.

They’re judges, after all, they live by ceremony – and they apparently have a lot of them.

I can get over them having a knees-up at our expense and doing it with a bit of style over the selection of grape juice and canapes.

So long as all the money is accounted for.

No, the most disturbing part of the story reported just a few days ago is that for two years these dollar figures were kept secret because someone in government thought it clever to use semantics and pedantry to avoid answering questions about them.

Liberal Senator Jane Hume pursued the issue over a number of Senate Estimates hearings, with suspicions of “lavishly catered” functions for the judges at taxpayers’ expense.

Each time the question was asked, the answer came back that the Federal Court hadn’t spent anything on social functions because it didn’t have any.

She was asking these questions of the Attorney-General’s Department and answers came back from the court through that agency.

The Senate was repeatedly told that the Federal Court was spending no taxpayer dollars on social get-togethers.

Something didn’t add up.

When Greens Senator David Shoebridge decided to ask the same question directly to the FCA in a subsequent Estimates hearing, the detailed questions were taken on notice.

The recently supplied answers revealed the above figures with a breakdown of the costs of all the parties over a three-year period.

Isn’t that interesting?

More like – it’s totally unacceptable.

The AG’s and the FCA escaped scrutiny for two years over one small word – ‘’Entity’’.

Here again how a spokesperson for the Federal Court of Australia justified giving two completely different answers to two different senators asking the same question.

“In responding to Senator Hume’s question, regarding ‘expenditure on any functions or official receptions etc hosted by the Department or agencies in the portfolio’, the Federal Court of Australia Entity has accurately provided a nil response because the Federal Court of Australia Entity has not hosted any relevant functions,” they said.

“The Federal Court of Australia Entity, as an agency in the AGD portfolio, does not include the Chief Justice, Judges and Registrars of the FCA.

“The FCA Entity also does not include the Chief Justice, Judges and Registrars of the FCFCOA.

“In contrast, Senator Shoebridge specifically asked questions of the Federal Court of Australia (which includes the Chief Justice and judges) regarding the costs of events hosted by the Court, such as judicial welcome and farewell ceremonies, judges and registrar plenaries, and other engagements with the legal profession etc.”

That’s all good then – except it’s not, because the Attorney-General’s Department and the Federal Court of Australia knew all along they were hiding the truth behind a smokescreen of deception.

Legal it might have been, but accountable it was not.

There are whole seminars to train bureaucrats how to perform in Senate Estimates and not give too much away when answering questions.

But this is an example of an extreme abuse of the process.

The boffins would have been slapping each other’s backs over how they evaded Senator Hume’s line of questions, when they should have instead been hanging their heads in shame.

It’s taxpayers’ money, it’s the Senate of Australia. How about a bit more accountability and dignity than trying to dodge legitimate questions?

If this behaviour is how the Federal Government wants its public service to behave while at the same time spruiking its ‘‘integrity’’ then it really is time for an election.

This, combined with the Australian National Audit Office finding that the FCA has also been quite creative with its corporate credit cards (also taxpayers’ money), casts a dim shadow over that agency, its parent department, and the government itself.