Email to Clerk of Senate of 18 July, and His Reply of 18 July

Dear Mr Evans

Thanks for your quick reply.

It is clear Mr Carter conveyed the decision of the committee. However the letter was not signed by the Chair of the committee. Mr Carter signed the letter. He takes the responsibility for the legitimacy of the information or reasons in the letter. What was put before the committee is whether or not they support the letter. The members of committee made the decision based on believing the reasons or information in the letter were legitimate.

According to the parliament’s website, ‘the clerk’s office is directly responsible for:

* ‘provision of high quality procedural and constitutional advice to senators in respect of the operations of the Senate and its committees
* ‘provision of secretariat, advisory and administrative support to the Procedure Committee and the Committee of Privileges’

It expressly appears your ‘office is responsible for’ the quality ‘of secretariat support’.

It seems your office has given the committee advice:

a. it should recommend the Senate to take up the matter if the petition is about a constitutional matter
b. to avoid dealing with the constitutional matter the secretary could do following tricks or twist the facts:

i. changing the matter concerned from ‘unlawful termination case’ to ‘unfair dismissal case’
ii. altering the High Court judges’ wording from ‘documents filed by the applicant do not demonstrate…’ (bold added) to ‘documents filed by the applicant fail to demonstrate…’ (bold added)
iii. Ignoring the first request of petition, which is: ‘ensure that employees’ rights under the Constitution are upheld by the laws and courts’.

My complaints are whether or not those three tricks are legitimate according to the professional standards. Your email seemly confirms those three tricks are legitimate.

My complainants to you are ‘quality’ of the ‘procedural advices’ and ‘secretariat, advisory and administrative support’ given by your office to the committee.

We really appreciate your responses. They are helpful to clarify the issues concerned.

I look forward to assisting you further with this matter.

Yours sincerely

Daming He

Dear Mr He

The points made in your email of today's date are misconceived, as indeed are the matters raised in your submission in the first instance. I do not have time to correct all of the misconceptions. As with the committee, our correspondence is terminated.

Yours sincerely

Harry Evans
Clerk of the Senate