Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the minister's failure to provide any sort of answer or any sort of an explanation.

They have failed to provide any explanation for why this complete failure has occurred. I should point out—for Senator Lundy's approval, one would hope—that a phone call was made to Minister Macklin's office this morning and it was followed up at 9.53 am by an email to her chief of staff asking about these questions and why they had not been answered. It would not, one assumes, take more than four hours to come up with an explanation as to why these answers have not been provided.

As for whether or not this should be sorted out on the last day of estimates hearings, it was during the last estimates hearings that the due date of 8 April 2011 was set for answers—more than 30 days ago. We are 30 days out and still we do not have the answers. If you look through the sorts of questions we requested answers to, you can see how important it is that we receive this material well before the next hearings. They relate to subjects such as paid parental leave and housing affected by natural disasters—a serious issue in both Queensland and Victoria. They cover changes to eligibility for carer allowance for parents of children with type 1 diabetes. Answers to those questions are being sought for a purpose: to assist people to understand the problems that parents of children with diabetes face in terms of eligibility. We are talking about answers to questions on assisted employment enterprises for people with disabilities—again, an area that has not been addressed properly—and questions relating to home­ownership on Indigenous lands, another area where the government has failed to provide the correct accountability. It is very hard to have any other response to this lack of answers and lack of explanation except to think that there is a deliberate attempt here to stop the opposition from having the infor­mation it needs to keep this government something like accountable.

Question agreed to.

I have a second question to put to Senator Ludwig, representing the Minister for Health and Ageing. This time it is in regard to answers that have not been provided to 39 of the questions asked by coalition senators during estimates in the Community Affairs Legislation Committee.