Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you. I am not going to prolong this any longer than necessary. I thank the minister for that. I must say that this is one of the issues that we constantly come up against. This is one of the reasons we so like the cross-portfolio estimates process. I acknowledge that this is DEEWR—and I am not having a go about the fact that you cannot answer the question and cannot make a promise on behalf of DEEWR—but the fact is that this bill deals with DEEWR and FaHCSIA, and it is very difficult trying to debate an issue when there is one department here and not the other when this crosses both portfolios. This is an issue that comes up all the time when we are dealing with Aboriginal issues. I am not having a go. I am just trying to continue to bring up with government the issue that it is very difficult to deal with—when we are talking about CDEP but we cannot get access to answers because it is another department that implements it. Then you bring in Human Services and Centrelink and it is another whole department. It is extremely difficult sometimes to get to the bottom of issues in one go, because we are continually having to go back to another department.