But its very success reminds of how its complement, the joint parliamentary committee of public accounts and audit, seems to have become little more than a social club.

That's a great pity for a host of reasons. The state of the committee serves as a symbol of a parliament that has become increasingly subservient to executive government; too timid, particularly in the lower house, to ask critical questions and to demand answers. Containing perhaps too many people too ambitious ever to rock a boat.

The symbolism is perhaps the more pitiful because it was through the establishment of a powerful ancestor of a public accounts committee in Britain, 350 years ago this year, that the seal was put on one of the great constitutional struggles between the king and parliament. The struggle convulsed the 17th century. It had caused illegal taxation and revolts by parliamentarians, attempts to govern without them, civil war, the beheading of a king, a republic and a military dictatorship. It would, 20 years further hence, lead to another king being deposed.

It was the struggle that established parliamentary supremacy and, in particular, the right of elected representatives alone to determine how public money was raised and spent. It fundamentally set the pattern for the shape of modern government at Commonwealth and state level in Australia. Even – because it anticipated the American Revolution by more than 100 years – basic constitutional precepts of American government.

In recent years, Australian parliamentarians have decided that the principles established no longer matter much. Because they think that and have abdicated their responsibilities, the judiciary, the third arm of government, has decided it doesn't much care either.

Politicians once died for it. Now they won't even defend it rhetorically. It's reason enough, by itself, to reread and enjoy the diaries of Samuel Pepys, who, in his day job in 1667, was secretary to the Admiralty. His diaries record much of the comings and goings between Seething Lane and the naval dockyards, and is a fascinating (if somewhat partisan and self-serving) record of who said what when, designed in part to cover his bum if everything went pear-shaped. As inevitably it did. It always does, in the end.

That committee was the forerunner of a parliamentary committee system claiming an unlimited right to investigate any area of public spending and administration.

The first British committee to be actually called a parliamentary accounts committee was established 160 years ago. Descendant parliaments copied it; the Australian Commonwealth from 1913. People of a certain age and nostalgia for the days of Joh Bjelke-Petersen and the Fitzgerald royal commission into corruption in Queensland government will recall that the banana parliament (which has existed since 1860) did not create a public accounts committee until 1988; Bjelke-Petersen could not see the point of one. That, by itself, said volumes.

A good public accounts committee starts by following up regular reports from the auditor-general, himself with an independent purview over government spending and required, in effect, to certify to parliament that money was spent in accordance with law.

Over the past half century, auditors-general, working with public accounts committees, have gone from playing mere accountant to asking fundamental questions about efficiency, effectiveness and value for money. Once, when the auditor-general had reported on an area of government fraud, waste, mismanagement or incompetence, one would expect that the public accounts committee would pick up the reins for an extensive inquiry.

Alas, the modern committee is rather more disposed to accept and note such reports, but not do anything much other than cut and paste a summary of what has already been said by someone with more clout. The committee has assumed the function of a cow in the paddock, chewing its cud as it watches the traffic go by.

One is reminded of this by a fairly breezy introduction to a recent report to parliament by the chair of the British public accounts committee, Meg Hillier.

The British committee does what such a committee ought. Hillier is a Labour MP but was chosen by the parliament to be chairwoman – a bit of bipartisanship difficult to imagine in Australia even if, by tradition, these committees do not divide on party lines. Some of Hillier's observations may ring a bell even in Australia.

"Chairing the public accounts committee gives me a unique view of how government departments spend taxpayers' money," she writes. "Week in, week out my committee colleagues and I quiz the civil servants who lead departments and projects on how efficiently and effectively they are spending your money. The ... committee has published 64 reports this session and 106 in total during this short parliament.

"I am proud of our work to promote international tax transparency and the successful London summit held in December last year. Over 60 parliamentarians from around the world have now signed our call for governments across the globe to legislate for public country by country reporting about tax.

"In this report, I highlight the departments which the next parliament needs to watch closely. Once again the standout concern is the Department of Health. The Department for Education is now showing some of the same financial strains that were evident in health a few years ago and is now clearly second highest on our list of concerns.

"The committee spends a lot of time scrutinising individual departments. This helps us see cross cutting issues about how government works – a lack of key data to measure performance, concerns about skills in the civil service, poor project management, cost shunting by one department to another part of the public sector and, of course, Brexit. Too often we get lip service about how these issues are important but see a depressingly regular return to the same old problems.

"After my second year as chair I am increasingly concerned about the long term accountability of senior civil servants. The game of musical chairs starts as one permanent secretary moves on and they all change jobs in the system.

"And few are in post long enough to have a vested interest in the long-term aims of their department or a project. And there is the age-old tension between a department and central Whitehall through the Cabinet Office.

"Time and again we see failures but not enough civil servants are there long enough to be held responsible for their actions.

"I have sought to counteract this by calling back any serving civil servant to answer for a former project – the failed Green Deal and the levy-control framework are just two examples. My message is clear: if you were responsible, you remain accountable for those actions and decisions, in public.

"A feature of this parliament has been the growing collaboration of chairs on the committee corridor. We have worked with health, the public administration and constitutional affairs committee, communities and local government and the business, energy and industrial strategy committee in particular. I thank my fellow chairs and believe this will continue and ensure more effective scrutiny in future.

"I have also focused the committee on some broader issues – our report on housing and our body of work on health and social care, for example. Diving deep into individual projects has an important role but it is the wider lessons about where and how Whitehall, government and politicians in general need to change their approaches to best achieve real outcomes for citizens that is the real prize.

"Looking ahead I would expect any future committee to have Brexit as top of its list of concerns – the cost of the UK's exit from the [European Union] will need to be examined along with the efficiency and effectiveness of how the government plans to deliver on projects that have been run at EU level. There is also a concern about how a reduced civil service will be able to cope with the demands of Brexit. A committee hearing with the head of the civil service, cancelled because of the general election, would have looked at how prepared the civil service was for this task.

"Devolution and international tax transparency are also key issues ..."

It sounds rather as if she, and her committee, have eyes on the ball, as well as on critical issues of British government and administration.

By contrast, the Commonwealth's public accounts committee met 19 times over the past financial year, which included eight days in which there were public hearings of one sort or another. No public servant was defenestrated, and one would search in vain for any hearings or reports meaty enough to warrant any sort of media reportage or scrutiny.

It had a desultory look at public sector governance in relation to the government deregulation agenda, and gave it a tick. It looked at risk management in the disability support pension program, and decided, courageously, that there was probably still scope to improve administration and risk management. Public servants everywhere quaked at the insight and the boldness.

It considered a critical audit report on how decisions were made, and loans approved, on two infrastructure programs. It agreed, sensationally, with the auditor and called for better processes, as well as an audit check on whether performance was better on a subsequent loan to the Sunshine Coast airport extension.

Other than that, members seem to have read 61 audit reports. The committee is taking submissions, if anyone is interested, on critical audit reports on the administration of grants for planting trees, the living safe together grants program and the Indigenous advancement strategy. On experience, their reviews will involve little more than a short report, written by committee staff, noting what the auditor said and making a few school-marmish comments taking matters no further than the bleeding obvious.

Likewise with critical audit reports on the higher education loan program debt, corporate planning in the public sector, and annual performance statements from the federal police and Agriculture Department. And audit reports on procurement shortcomings involving Airservices Australia.

I'd be surprised if we learn much more about blistering audit criticism of how the Immigration Department managed contracts to provide healthcare in our overseas concentration camps, or of its shoddy record-keeping. Or about already disclosed weaknesses in cybersecurity.

Mercifully, there was enough time last year for travel to important fact-finding conferences with like-minded members of state-level committees.

It has been years since a chairman, or even a member of a Commonwealth public accounts committee, has been feared, or even much respected, by ministers or bureaucrats. Senator John Watson, who retired in 2008, was probably the last; David Connolly, who lost his preselection to Brendan Nelson in 1996, the second last. Perhaps the best was Professor Francis Bland, a former senior public servant and professor of public administration, who chaired the committee and terrorised most (but not all) of the public servants of the Sir Robert Menzies era. Bland numbers among his accomplishments being the best (and best-qualified) representative the seat of Warringah has ever had, and being the father of Sir Henry Bland, himself a formidable public servant of the Menzies era and the decade after.

An underperforming committee might not matter so much if one could be confident that some of the other watchdogs of good government were effective in reining in poor administration, or making it certain bad management or behaviour would be detected.

As it happens, the High Court has made it clear in the past month that it will not fill in gaps of parliamentary supervision of public spending. It seems to think that sections 81 and 83 of the constitution – the two crucial clauses representing the triumph of parliament over the executive in the 17th century – are protections for parliament, not the citizen. If parliament does not care to do its job, the High Court will not do anything about it.

A want of watchdogs and checks and balances ought to be more of a worry as supine premiers and chief ministers, and a supine federal opposition, refuse to consider protection of individual rights for fear of being wedged by prime ministers and ministers playing politics with national security.

Can one imagine how the offices of the ombudsman, the inspector-general of security or the law enforcement integrity commissioner have the will or the clout to prevent abuse of power in the new super surveillance state?

No doubt each of these office holders (fewer than one in 1000 people could readily name any one of them) are splendid chaps. No doubt their silence is actually a certification that all is tickety-boo. The problem is that none of these watchdogs has any sort of public persona. Confidence in guardians depends of their having reputations for fearless defence of the public interest.

As things stand, that's the last thing governments seem to want. Or parliaments. Or public accounts committees.

Jack Waterford is a former editor of The Canberra Times. jwaterfordcanberra@gmail.com