Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

The Ombudsman has a broad range of activities. He is charged with receiving complaints and investigating various matters, and he has certain functions conferred on him by a range of different Commonwealth statutes. In so far as the question is directed to the sufficiency of the resources as a whole that the Commonwealth Ombudsman has been given to carry out the various roles that he is currently charged with in his activities generally and his discretionary activities in particular, the Ombudsman's brief is to look at various matters on a self-starting basis and he has been given overall supervisory responsibility for a range of areas in the Commonwealth's jurisdiction. In so far as those discretionary activities are conducted by him, they must be done in a way that can be managed within the budget that his office has been given. There is a degree of discretion available to him as to what tasks he decides to undertake and there is a degree of discretion vested in him as to what resources and funding he devotes to particular activities.

In so far as this question is directed to the particular role that the Commonwealth Ombudsman has in relation to immigration detainees—I took the question to be particularly referring to that—questions about specific measures affecting those immigration detainees need to be raised with the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

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