George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Minister for the Arts and Sport) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Carr, I am not in a position to give you the assurance that it will be delivered to you immediately. Senator Carr, may I say—and I think you know this—that, since I have been a minister, I have taken a very punctilious view about the obligations of the government to respond to questions properly put and taken on notice by departments in estimates. I am of the view that the government has obligations to the parliament, which, in particular, means obligations to the opposition, and that this process would be made a nonsense of unless those obligations were discharged. I do not think you doubt my good faith about this, Senator Carr. You have me at a disadvantage. I do not recollect the particular question and I do not recollect the particular undertaking, but, if you say so, Senator Carr, I of course take you at your word. If the undertaking was given that the information would be provided that day then it ought to have been provided on that day, and you are entitled to expect that the public servants would have used their best endeavours to get it to you. All I can tell you is that my advice is that the information has been assembled. Obviously, it was not provided to you on the day, and there may well have been very good reasons why it was not able to be provided to you on the day. However, I am told that your information has been assembled, that it is being checked and that it will be provided as soon as that has been done.