Intelligence Review Committee must, by law, be privy councillors. Both Prince
Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, and the Prince of Wales are members of the
Privy Council of Canada, appointed respectively in 1951 and 2014; in 1916,
the Prime Minister of Australia, W. M. Hughes, was made a member. He has
been described as an honorary member but the meaning of this is unclear, as
being a privy councillor of itself does not attract any remuneration.
The office of President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada has been
described as the‘closest thing to a sinecure’in Ottawa; it is often held in
conjunction with other ministerial posts.
Canada’s Privy Council is supported by a Privy Council Office (PCO),
headed by the Clerk of the Privy Council, who also has the titles of Secretary
to the Cabinet and, by statute, Head of the Public Service. Except in relation to
statutory instruments and orders-in-council, the PCO does not seem to have
much to do with the Privy Council. The PCO describes itself as‘the hub of
non-partisan, public service support to the Prime Minister and Cabinet and
its decision-making structures...[it] helps the Government implement its
vision and respond effectively and quickly to issues facing the government
and country’.
14.4 The Cabinet
The Cabinet is the centrepiece of a Westminster government. It embodies the
essential characteristic, namely, the intimacy of the legislature and the execu-
tive; as Walter Bagehot wrote, the Cabinet is‘a hyphen which joins, a buckle
which fastens, the legislative part of the state to the executive part of the state’
(Bagehot 1867, p.15). The Cabinet is unknown to the Australian Constitution.
But, whereas in the UK it is designated as a committee of the Privy Council,
and, in Canada, of the Privy Council of Canada, the nearest the Australian
Cabinet comes to an organic link with the Federal Executive Council is a rule,
not of great moment, that meetings of the Executive Council have precedence
over Cabinet meetings!
The Cabinet, in all jurisdictions, is as elusive as it is pervasive. Much gov-
ernment business and decision-making has a Cabinet wrapping. All ministers
are bound by Cabinet decisions but, even if very senior, they may not have
been present when they were made.
In Australia, the Cabinet is currently composed of nineteen ministers. Other
ministers, eleven in number, and parliamentary secretaries, of whom there are
twelve, may attend specified items. The Cabinet‘meets in the Cabinet room at
Parliament House, Canberra, in most weeks of the year’(DPMC 2015, p. 53). It
has a substantial agenda,‘matters of public interest, importance, or contro-
versy...only in emergencies will significant decisions not go to the Cabinet’
Australia’s Distinctive Governance