Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is the President's report to the Senate on the status of government responses to parliamentary committee reports. It is something that's provided twice yearly. It's one of those documents that would seem to be fairly dry and that often become routine and pass rapidly into the dusty places wherever these reports get filed away.

But, since returning to this place, I have had a regular need to look at what things have changed in the 10 years since I was last year and what things are the same. I actually encourage people to have a look at this report. It's not particularly long. It's 17 pages. It simply lists all of the outstanding Senate committee reports and joint committee reports where the government has yet to respond to the recommendations. It's not the sole purpose of a Senate committee inquiry to produce recommendations for a government to decide whether or not then to act on, but it's a pretty important part of it. All of us here know that we get great value out of hearing from the community, of going to places and seeing what's happening on the ground, and of looking at all those submissions and considering things in more depth. But the end result is often but not always a report which makes recommendations—often unanimous, sometimes not—proposing that the government do things to address the problem that the committee has identified and the solutions they've identified based on the public feedback.

It's one of the best mechanisms for the public to have an input into the issues that affect them and for people in the community who have expertise—whether academic, theoretical, practical or lived expertise—to have a say on important policy issues that affect them or that they have an interest in. I'm sure all of us here would recognise that we are not the experts on everything, and often are not experts at all on some matters.

So it is very concerning to see just how many reports have not been responded to. The Senate has a convention, I guess, that the government should respond within three months. I think the House of Representatives convention is six months. This report lists—in a 16- or 17-page-long table—all of those Senate committee reports where the government has yet to respond. Most of them are well over six months. There was a very significant report, for example, on certain aspects of the Queensland government administration related to Commonwealth government affairs. A special Senate special select committee reported nearly three years ago now. No response has been received. I'm just picking a few of these at random: The effectiveness of special arrangements for the supply of Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) medicines to remote area Aboriginal Health Services. That one was tabled in 2011. There has been no response, over six years later. That doesn't mean nothing's happened in that area; I am not saying that. But I am saying that a fundamental and very basic part of accountability to the community—not just for government but for all of us; we all get paid to conduct these Senate inquiries, and there is public money spent on them—is that there be a response, even if the response is, 'Yeah, we're already doing that, thanks.' It's not that hard. Well, apparently it is that hard, because we have reports like that that haven't been responded to in over six years. There are many here in the community affairs area: another one from 2012, one from 2013, three from 2014 and two from 2015. It's not good enough.

It might seem like a really dry and tedious thing to be talking about government responses to committee reports, but when a Senate committee brings down a report that's usually what we all talk about. We'll talk about plenty of other things, but the one thing we will almost always talk about is what the recommendations are for action. I have spoken a number of times since I've been back here about housing affordability. There was a report from the economics committee inquiry into the Australian housing affordability challenge tabled in May 2015—still no response. A report on the exploitation of temporary work visa holders, a major issue in my state of Queensland, was tabled nearly two years ago-no response. The impacts of mining in the Murray Darling Basin, a topic we're talking about now, was tabled in 2009–no response.

This is across the life of the Labor government as well, of course. It's a joke. The fact that it happens every six months shouldn't be a reason to ignore it. I really would like the government to do better, and all of us to do better at insisting that we get better responses. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.