A good suggestion from the Clerk of the House

From the Review of Standing Orders:

We gave serious consideration to the current structure of the select committee system, and the way that the membership of select committees is determined. Much of this consideration was focused on the control that parties in Government can exert over select committees under the current system.

The ACT Party and the Green Party both suggested making the membership of select committees proportional to the non-executive membership of the House. The effects of that approach would vary depending on the make-up of Governments, but overall, it would generally result in parties not in Government having a majority on most or all subject select committees. Arguments were put forward both for and against this approach. It was argued that non-Government majorities on select committees would improve legislative and financial scrutiny. We also considered the reverse—that select committees with non-Government majorities might undermine the system’s performance of its legislative function, which is widely considered a strength of the current system.

We also considered a proposal from Chris Penk MP for the membership of all select committees to be evenly split between parties in Government and not in Government, as well as a proposal from the Clerk to fundamentally restructure select committees into a system of paired legislation and scrutiny committees under which governing parties would have a majority for the consideration of legislation, and parties not in Government would have a majority for scrutiny of the executive.

I quite like this proposal from the Clerk. So you would, for example, have an Education Legislation Committee which the Government would have a majority on, but also an Education Scrutiny Committee which the Opposition would have a majority on. So the Government could still get its laws through, but the Opposition would have the power to actually hold inquiries, summon witnesses, scrutinise decision making more.