Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee, , 41:44 to 1:23:15
Department of Parliamentary Services officials address infrastructure planning, recent ICT system outages, and cybersecurity threats to the building.
Topics: Infrastructure, Government IT systems, National security
Speakers: Nicola Hinder PSM, Hon James McGrath, Hon Sue Lines, Mike Webb, Jaala Hinchcliffe, Dr Gordon de Brouwer PSM, Karen Grogan, Speaker 11
>> Thank you. Um, thank you very much to the Parliamentary Budget Office. Uh, we appreciate your time. Um, and I would now ask the Department of Parliamentary Services and Parliamentary Services
>> Waiting rooms. You want to >> Sorry. In the waiting room.
>> They're in the waiting room. All right, we might suspend for a moment. Apparently, they're not in the Um, welcome to Miss Jala Hinchcliffe, Secretary and other officers of the Department of Parliamentary Services. Also, welcome Dr. Gordon Bru, who I believe this is be your last run out at estimates. Um, the parliamentary service commissioner and we also have Mr. Steven Fox, the parliamentary librarian. Um, Miss Hcliffe, would you like to make an opening statement? Um, >> I have an opening statement as well, chair. >> Yes. Do you um would you would you like to go first?
It's now been more than 12 months since the presiding officers terminated the former deputy of parliament the department of parliamentary services secretary due to a loss of trust and confidence and appointed Miss Jala Hinchcliffe as acting secretary. Recruitment for a new secretary commenced in January 2025 and after a competitive recruitment process, Miss Hinchcliffe was appointed secretary of DPS on the 7th of March 2025. The Speaker of the House of Representatives and I, as preciding officers of the Parliament, hold joint responsibility for the control and management of the parliamentary precincts. I'm providing this statement to the finance and public administration
committee. Um, sorry. Can I stop you
>> Apparently broadcasting just stopped for 5 minutes cuz something's gone down.
>> Something's gone wrong. >> Oh, with the broadcast suspend. >> So, uh, we will just suspend for a Thank you to broadcast for fixing the glitch. We will start again. Okay. >> Um just for um just for clarity. >> Um and I would like to welcome Miss Jala Hinchcliffe, the secretary and other officers of the Department of Parliamentary Services and Dr. Gordon De Bruer, the parliamentary services commissioner and the other officers at the table. Um, we'll start with the president, the honorable Sue Lines, uh, and your opening statement.
>> Thank you, chair. It's now been more than 12 months since the presiding officers terminated the former Department of Parliamentary Services Secretary due to a loss of trust and confidence and appointed Miss Jala Hinchcliffe as acting secretary. Recruitment for a new secretary commenced in January 2025 and after a competitive recruitment process, Miss Hinchcliffe was appointed secretary of DPS on the 7th of March 2025. The Speaker of the House of Representatives and I, as preciding officers of the Parliament, hold joint responsibilities for the control and management of parliamentary precincts. I am providing this statement to the finance and public admin committee as part of my responsibility as a presiding officer and president of the Senate to appear before state before estimates. The incentive to retire payment paid by DPS to a former deputy secretary has generated interest from members of this committee, the media, and the Australian public. Concerns about the ITR payment have been raised in previous hearings of this committee and the department has responded with detail on these matters. It is able to discuss uh on matters it is able to discuss noting the acknowledge related investigation being conducted by the knack. On the 24th of July 2024, I was informed by Miss Hinchcliffe in her then role as DPS deputy secretary that matters in relation to the ITR payment made to the former deputy sec secretary required independent examination. This resulted in the appointment of an independent external investigator, Dr. for Fiona Ruffley to conduct a factf finding investigation into the department's actions regarding the ITR The terms of reference supporting the independent investigation were provided to me when Dr. Ruffley was appointed. They have also been tabled with this committee. A summary of the findings of Dr. Ruffley's report was provided to this committee by the department on the 16th of October 2025. I do not intend to revisit these matter matters in this statement. This committee was informed on November 4, 2025 that the Knack had issued warrants at Australian Parliament House on the 3rd of October 2024. I also don't intend to revisit this. On the 14th of March 2025, prior to receiving a copy of Dr. Roughly's final report, the preciding officers were informed by the DPS deputy secretary of concerns identified by Dr. Ruffley, including concerns about how data was collected by DPS ISD. The deputy secretary indicated that as a result of these and other concerns, consideration was being given by the department to commence a code of conduct investigation into DPS officers. The preiding officers were also informed that further code actions were likely. Code of conduct matters of course fall within the operational responsibilities of the department. The roughly report was provided to preciding officers on the 18th of March 2025. On August 27, 2025, the preciding officers were informed that an inappropriate search across all exchange locations of the parliamentary network had been undertaken by DPS ISD offices contrary to authorizations provided by the DPS secretary. The presiding office officers were also informed that Dr. Ruffley and the Knack had raised concerns about the integrity of data provided previously by DPS ISD I was further informed that several code of conduct processes were close to completion and that in accordance with procedural fairness, the outcome of those matters would not not be known until due process had been followed and procedural fairness afforded to those officers. I did not know at the time that DPS employee data obtained from the parliamentary communications network was being held off site. On October 29, 2025, I was advised that DPS employer data was held off site in a secure data forensic laboratory. This was one business day before the supplementary budget estimates hearing of this committee on 31st of October. On 3rd of November 2025, my office inquired about the feasibility of returning the data to AP. The next day, the presiding officers issued a formal direction to the DPS secretary to work with the clarks in the creation of a procedure to facilitate the return of This procedure was approved and signed off by the preiding officers. On the 27th of November 2025, the DPS employee data was returned to AP on January 7 and 8 of this year. The presiding officers were informed by the DPS secretary that all steps outlined in the data return procedure had been completed. I advise the committee that I continue to have the trust and confidence in the DPS secretary and deputy secretary. I thank all DPS staff for their work and their commitment to the smooth, efficient and professional way in which they carry out their responsibilities to this place. The parliament is an iconic building and the heart of our democracy. What you do matters. I see your work and I appreciate it. I also acknowledge parliamentary services commissioner Dr. Gordon De Bruer has indicated he is stepping down from his role to explore new horizons. I thank Gordon for the support and wise counsel he has provided to me in support of the various acts which govern parliamentary departments. Thank you Gordon for your services to the parliament, the Australian public and parliamentary services. Thanks chair.
care to make an opening statement? >> Just a very quick one. Uh chair Jala Hinchcliffe, secretary department of parliamentary services. Uh chair and members of the finance of public and administration committee. I welcome the opportunity uh to appear before you today to discuss uh matters that are relevant to the department of parliamentary services. Before I and senior executive members of DPS respond to your questions, I'd like to take the opportunity to provide the committee with information as to my considerations relevant to parliamentary privilege and its application during various activities in support of Dr. Fiona Ruffy's factf finding investigation into the incentive to retire payment made by DPS to a former departmental deputy secretary. I understand that the committee may have questions of me regarding my considerations. To assist the committee, I will table the information and I will draw from it in my responses that I provide the committee on this matter. This information is extensive and in the interest of time I will not read it onto the record. It is also consistent with the department's submission to the Senate Standing Committee of Privileges current inquiry into the Department of Parliamentary Services handling of documents and communications a copy of which I provided to this committee on the 29th of January 2026. The rest of the opening statement chair I will just table.
>> Um it'd be very useful if we could have it to circulate to committee members. >> Uh Dr. Jabrell, would you care to make an opening statement?
>> Uh no no thank you chair. But I do want to thank the president and presiding officers for their very kind comments. uh al maybe also express my just how wonderful it's been working with the parliamentary service departments and very much thank the committee for the constructive and active engagement over the past few years. Thank you chief.
>> Thank you and we um I think the whole committee we wish you all the very best in your next great adventure. >> Uh we will go to questions and we will start with Senator McGrath.
>> Cheers. Um thank you. Good morning uh Miss Hinder, at the last estimates, we had a discussion about plans for an extension or expansion of Parliament House should the government decide to increase the size of Parliament. You said the department wasn't, I quote, actively exploring options. Is a possible extension to Parliament House part of any future proofing or planning activities in the department?
>> Uh good morning, Senator. Good morning, members of the committee. Nicola Hinder, deputy secretary and chief operating officer. Uh Senator, we are constantly having a look at the footprint and the space requirements planning for activities at Parliament House, but at the moment we have no active plans in terms of an extension or a wing extension underway. We have a very active plan in terms of building renewal works uh such as what the committee will see on Friday during your work through.
So in terms of >> I suppose it comes to the def definition of actively exploring >> there are there are plans
>> Senator there are no current plans at the moment to expand the current footprint of Australian Parliament
>> There are no current plans
>> nor have we been engaged on any plans to be able to do the same.
do you know when was the last time the that the parliament or your your department looked at at plans to increase? This is obviously outside the the current footprint of Parliament House. Uh, when was the last time those that that issue would have been looked at?
>> Oh, Senator, I believe it was a number of years ago. I can give a date on that. Um but I don't believe that the plans actually went very far due to the significance of the cost that would be involved.
>> Okay. Uh President, have you have you seen these plans and your
>> No, Senator Regard, those are questions for the government, not for me.
are you aware of of whether anyone in executive government has requested to to see the plans?
>> Uh Senator, absolutely. Not in the year that I have been at DPS. Absolutely not.
>> That's since since you've been at DPS, but but previously
>> Senator I'll just have a cast look back on the team that's got a broader corporate memory in our planning and quality area, but they're also shaking their head. Senator, no.
>> Okay. So, within the building, within the current footprint, there are a of suppose bodies or or um that have been shifted off site. Which ones have been shifted off site?
>> Senator, the biggest part of that has actually been the impact on the Department of Parliamentary Services. I believe the last lot of numbers that I had a look at indicated that several hundred of our workforce had moved. That was when we had the building that was at National Circuit as well as a small footprint here. Since that time, we've relocated to West Block and we've also seen uh even uh greater numbers of DPS staff move from Parliament House to Westblock. I can assure the members of the committee though that all of the people that are involved in the day-to-day management, our Hansard broadcasting staff, ICT, those that have a direct need to be here are here.
>> So, how how many uh staff are employed or FTEEs um are employed by DPS
>> at the moment as at 31st of December, Senator, our current number was 1,219. In terms of our westblock uh footprint, I think we have actually provided those details to you as well, but I can let you know that at the moment we have I'll get you the exact number of um staff down there, Senator. I think it's in the in the order of about 400 staff down there as well as Westblock. At the moment um we relocated some staff from the parliamentary budget office. Their first day working at Westlock was 27th of October of last year and I believe that the majority of PBO staff with the exception of the parliamentary budget officer and a small number of other staff retain a footprint here at AP. Senator as well just to be completely open to. We also have the independent parliamentary standards authority based [clears throat] at West Block. Um and their footprint I believe is no more than eight eight offices.
if on notice it's fine in terms of the precise figures there in terms of the DPS staff left in the building and and those at Westblock. Uh, in response to question notice 120, the department confirmed the 11 new suites currently being constructed will cost an estimated $1.34 million excluding GST per suite. So, it's a total cost of $14.8 million. That seems a a lot of money, $1.3 million for for for an off an internal office. Does that represent do you think that represents value for money?
>> Senator, one of the activities that we will be hoping to be able to talk to members of the committee about on Friday during your walk through is the very significant differences around the construction costs associated with building works at Parliament House. The majority of spaces, in fact all spaces at Parliament House have been built to very exacting standards and they are bespoke designs, very high ceilings, very high quality and finishes of work. It's really important underneath the design integrity principles that those suites are constructed to the same manner as the existing parliamentary suites are in AP. Of course, there has been a difference in construction costs over time
>> in relation to these new suite. So, this is on the Senate side of of the building.
>> Yes, Senator.
>> did did the department have engaged in consultation with um staff and did did the I I'll start again. Um, President, I don't think the question was that bad. Other times you could have thrown water at me, but like um um in relation to um the the the work that's been undertaken with these 11 new Uh did the department engage in consultation with your senators and their staff in relation to how the current suites operate?
So Senator, it's a it's a very interesting question. Um so the way that the department actually performs the building works is that we are responsible for the construction of the building works. We go through the design integrity process in consultation with colleagues from the department of the senate. We are instructed to be able to do the works upon that instruction. Um, but we work closely with the Department of Senate colleagues because it is within their footprint and it is within their responsibilities. I do not recall whether or not DPS undertook that consultation. Um, but I'm happy to confirm whether or not colleagues at the Department of the Senate who are responsible for the footprint within the Senate did do so. I
>> I I think that would be good because spending um $14.8 $8 million for these 11 new new these 11 new suites. And you know there are some notwithstanding the design limits that are placed upon you there are obviously some issues that the the offices we call them sweet but they're offices >> uh are analog models in in a digital age. >> Uh and
>> so that's absolutely correct Senator. would be our intention though when we go through the process towards the completion of the suites. We are thinking but we haven't yet landed on or agreed the process by which we'll do so to have a look at the furniture design that is available within those suites. Um, it is acknowledged that the furniture that is here in AP at the moment is absolutely outstanding in its quality and its craftsmanship, but it was designed for a very different office environment for parliamentarians in place 40 years ago when the building opened. One of the things that we are working through and we're doing this in consultation with colleagues from the department of finance, the department of the house of representatives and the department of the senate is what the office fit out will be in those suites and we are considering whether or not we look at establishing three different lots of setouts have consultation with parliamentarians as to how they think
that will work. I I I would strongly en encourage consultation with with parliamentarians in particular with the staff um in terms of those especially a lot of staff are FIFOs uh who fly in and fly out in terms of making their lives easy and I think that would go across across the Senate regardless of our political color. Um when with the 11 suites what they're replacing DPS areas or PBO
areas? Well, Senator, it there's work that's underway in both the basement that's in building renewal work for the suite. There's work underway at level one, which is the start of the construction of the suites. It's also contains the fourth party room. On level two, there will be additional suites that are being constructed. The people that were there, if you want to track back through a number of years of operations at Parliament House, it was the executive level for the Department of Parliamentary Services at one point. DPS relocated from that end to this end. The parliamentary budget office went in um and took the space that DPS did have allocated under its footprint. Now that space in accordance with the original design of the building is being converted into new suites for parliamentarians on the Senate side.
>> How many suites are there currently on on the Senate side? Uh Senator, I'll
have to provide you with that notice, but I think there's about 15 in addition to what the current numbers in the Senate are, I believe, because some of them are being used for um uh the parliamentary budget officer, for instance, has one. The allocations of those suites though are solely within the responsibility of the department of
>> So, I just want to know what the new total number will be. Uh
>> any my team got a number, Senator? I'll get that number for you this morning and we'll pass that up.
just so I know when was the and you may have answered this previous I apologize if you have. When was the budget approved for the new the new suites?
>> Uh so Senator in one of the responses to the questions I'll notice we've taken through the timeline. It's the responsibility of the department's executive committee to be able to provide funding within our existing appropriation level for Parliament House for construction costs at Parliament House. >> Okay. I think the latest um active decision that was undertaken by the executive committee occurred through the third quarter of last year. Um and that was when we were really um or the second quarter of last year and that was when I think we were really pushing through in order to have the suites um uh the fourth party room and the suites underway in time for the opening of parliament.
>> Okay. So, so the the fourth party room was is that that's open now, isn't it? Or that's
>> that's all right, Senator. It's been in use since the open of Parliament.
>> Okay. But the 11 suites are still ongoing.
>> Uh the 11 suites on the first floor are closer to finalization. We did not start the construction of the second floor until uh the PBO relocated back to West over to West Block in October of last year.
Um and so the money there was no additional money for the construction of the suites or the fourth party room was within
>> Senator we did not receive um we did not put up a new a new policy proposal to seek additional funding. The funding of those construction costs come within the department's existing appropriation levels.
>> Okay, I'm I'm okay with that bit there. I do have some more questions on a different area if that's okay. Y that's fine. >> Just checking with the can I go to uh the dynamic red please? I'm sure you might have been expecting this question. >> in relation to and for those who who are who are following the dynamic red is sort of the live version of what's going on in the Senate. Uh it's sort of like the an electronic version of the agenda but it's constantly updated. Um so can you tell us what happened? So, like I've got lots of questions here, but I'm just going to ask an open-ended question in terms of it did go the dynamic rent did go down and it did impact the ability of senators to do their job.
>> Um, Senator, do you mean uh last week ask Mr. Mike Webb our CIO to come forward and discuss that.
>> Senator, while um Mr. Webs joining us at the table. Um the ICT architecture that's currently in place. Uh we are spending a considerable amount of time on at the moment because there is an incredible amount of historical complexity that is within the ICT architecture within Parliament House. Mr. Webb will be able to talk about that in a little bit more. But I just wanted to give confidence to senators at the moment it is a spaghetti string of systems that underpin the operations of the entire AP network and there is an incredible amount of effort underway within our ICT team to simplify this to make it better and to increase
>> Good morning Senator Mike Webb chief information officer. Um as uh Miss Hinder mentioned the AP website is a complex series of integrated systems been in place in its current architecture for about 13 years or thereabouts. Um team is working very hard in stabilizing red um unwinding some of the complexity and uh focusing on resilience. What happened last week uh was a backend uh application integration service for
>> this this is on the Thursday when it went Correct. Sorry. What time did it start? What time did it stop working?
>> Uh, I haven't got the exact figure with me, Senator. It was midm morning from memory. Went until about mid mid
afternoon. >> It was about 6 hours was my
>> Yeah, correct.
>> So, sorry for interrupting.
>> Yeah. So, it was uh midm morning uh around 10:30 or thereabouts. I get I'm happy to um send through those um exact details of the uh of the time it was down. Uh it was recovered midafter afternoon. It was approximately 5 and 1 half to 6 hours. Um, uh, parts of the website were, um, impacted. Um, unlike previous outages, we've had, um, uh, the main AP website's been down. In this scenario, uh, a smaller subset of the systems, obviously, Dynamic Red being one of them, uh, was impacted during
>> But when you say went just to explain to to us senators or particularly to me cuz I'm a lite. Um when you say went down, what actually happened? So you why did it go down and and and >> uh why did it take so long particularly on a sitting day when we need the dynamic reg to you know staff in this building regardless of ro sort of need to know what's going on in the Senate sort of what why did it take so long? What what what happened in in plain
and give you the plain English at the beginning and I would certainly not say you're a lad senator when it comes to operations within the house. Um, Senator, quite simply, there's a range of digital certificates which underpin the operations of every digital platform that you operate. A department is responsible for the maintenance of those [clears throat] digital operating certificates. Uh in this case, the digital operating certificate that underpinned the operation of the main system supporting the dynamic red and a small number of other um areas within the AP website. The certificate expired which meant that it didn't have the necessary security accredititation in order to be able to underpin the operations and the ongoing support provided for that system. However, can I note that this was also a highly unusual circumstance and while it took the department a little bit longer than what it would normally do to be able to examine a certificate issue was because this certificate was held in a provider that was outside the range of our normal certificate providers was with the new provider and was held against the name of an ex employee as opposed to being held within the name of the Department of Parliamentary Services. So that took a little bit of time for our team to be able to both unpick the passwords etc for the underpinning um digital certificate were also not held which is outside normal practice. It took time for our staff to be able to both identify what the issue was, go to the service provider, prove the verification of the service provider that the department was actually able to reenable that digital certificate, have the digital certificate reenabled and restore service. It's not something I think that would be considered within normal practice to have that happen in that way. Um but again, Senator, I was very proud of the fact that our staff were able to identify the issue quickly and take the necessary steps to be able to bring that back on board.
>> So when you say a certificate being um we always get reminders on our phones to make sure we renew pass passwords and other things. And does the does ICT have its own sort of register of when things need to be renewed?
>> Yeah. So Senator uh yes there are reminders for certificate renewals. Um we have a uh a standard um process where certificates are with one certificate authority which provides us that visibility of all certificates in the AP network and the parliamentary computing environment. As Miss Inda mentioned, this certificate was issued from a different certificate authority which wasn't documented and wasn't consistent with our standard practices which is why it wasn't um able to be um uh identified until uh it expired and and impacted
before in terms of the certificates expiring? Uh is it is this a new issue or is it just this is just a one-off?
I'd like to think it's a one-off, Senator. Yeah, we've um uh by by standard practice, we are regularly renewing certificates ahead of their expiry um to ensure continuity of services. So, this is not a not a typical uh thing where certificates have to expire and then we we renew them. Um standard practice is they're renewed before they expire for continuity of
various services. President, were you able to have a meeting with ICT or with the secretary in relation to to this
issue? Um, in relation to the dynamic red, yes, >> a member of my team I suspect would have spoken to DPS, but I'll take that on notice.
>> And in relation to the dynamic red, I do recall it's gone down some a couple other times. Is that just oneoff glitches or do you have a record of when when it's gone down?
>> I I do, Senator. We've had uh with regards to dynamic red specifically, no. But with regards to um the AP website and the interconnected group of systems, Senator, in 2025 through to today, we've had uh eight incidents of which three have been outages. Um all have had different causes. Senator uh 26th of November um uh there was an integration service uh so between the front end web systems and uh the data layer in the back end which was had an issue. 30th of October, there was a three-hour incident relating to a Microsoft cloud uh services that was outside of our control, but the um uh that the services do consume. And the 23rd of January, uh there was a uh yisau spider crawler bot uh from a Chinese search engine that uh overloaded the website uh for >> it's it's a a crawler bot um and what is that? All right. So, our search engines have a um uh have robots that crawl websites to uh to be able to provide uh provide search results. Um >> uh this particular one, I'm probably not pronouncing it well, but yo, spider crawler bot overloaded the website for several hours until that was mitigated and slowed down. So, they're the three incidents. Uh 26th November, 30 October, 23 January.
>> Now, I I normally also do ask this question. I normally don't get an answer, but I'm going to ask it anyway. the Parliament of Australia, the Parliament of Australia is a a key target, I would suggest, for uh parties, sorry, foreign parties who do not have the best interests of Australia. uh how many attempts have there been to infiltrate uh the to impact the operation of parliament through ICT areas?
>> Uh look Senator that's a it's a difficult one to give you a a very uh precise answer on because there are several vectors. Uh so you're right it is a a high value target. We are uh constantly um being attacked from various various means. What I can tell you is from uh the dates I could hear, October through to today, there's been no significant um cyber incidents. Um I can tell you in that same time there's been more than more than 7,000 fishing attempts. Uh we've detected malware 36 times um uh that we've blocked. Uh and we've had another uh 13 uh 1,360 other cyber alerts that our cyber team have picked up and investigated.
Weirdly, that doesn't sound that many like uh like it's obviously a lot, but in terms of some of the the foreign interests here, uh you would have thought that they would just be constantly bombarding our systems that there would be hundreds of thousands if not millions of attempted attacks on parliamentarians, you know, phones and iPads and things like that. So, is that a good thing that it's relatively low in
your view? Uh, look, I think I think they're probably the numbers that are right at the pointy end of those those um those entries. I think if we went through firewall logs, there would be many many millions of blocks and other things, but um some of those are uh just part of, you know, being connected to the internet. These ones are more at the pointy end of the
>> So, there are many millions.
>> And Senator, can we just um also recognize the huge efforts of the department's cyber security team? >> [snorts] >> um and the role that they play every day in protecting the systems that we operate and the protection of the systems that you operate as well.
>> Just in in relation to cyber security, Senator, um uh at the moment the ANAO is conducting a performance audit in relation to cyber security um and DPS, which I welcome uh their work here to come and have a look um as an oversight agency in relation to uh the work that we're doing on cyber security. Um I know this committee will be interested in the results of that when ANI have finished
>> Uh I just have some couple more questions chair in a different area and then then I'm done. So if that's okay it's
>> sure I will just give everyone a bit of a heads up. Uh obviously we're going to go over because we still have other senators with questions. Um we will push out the break to 10:45 in I don't know a sense that we might finish up by then.
>> Um I don't think so. I've got heaps of questions for DPS does as well.
>> Okay. In which case, what we might do then, Senator McGrath, if you finish,
>> I've got a couple more questions, >> Perfect if that's okay with colleagues.
>> But yeah, heads up, that means we'll be going somewhat over. So, everyone's >> uh planning. Thank you. Please go ahead.