Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

My department and its agencies aim to deliver answers to questions on notice at the earliest opportunity and endeavour to meet the committee's deadline to the best extent possible. The department and its portfolio agencies received 425 questions following the additional budget estimates hearings on 22 February. Many of these questions had multiple subparts, which meant that there were around 600 individual questions. According to my information from the Clerk, this is near a record for any department. Nearly 50 per cent of these questions required responses from NBN Co. which continues to face a significant workload.

In light of the volume of questions, the secretary of my department wrote to the committee on 1 April and advised them that due to the complexity of the information required by many of the questions he was unlikely to be able to provide answers to a significant number of questions by the due date of 8 April. My department answered 39 per cent of its questions by the committee's due date of 8 April. As of today, my department and its portfolio agencies have answered 185 questions—that is 43 per cent. While every effort is made to submit responses within the time frame provided, there are a number of factors that contribute to delays in responses. These factors include: questions that contain several subquestions or parts; questions that are often complex, for example, for technical or data collection reasons and require the responses to address a high level of detail; the coordination of inputs to responses provided from multiple line areas and/or departments and agencies; and of course there is always the factor of trying to define the stream of consciousness of Senator Fisher.