Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

I would like to say to the minister that this report is a very important report that goes to an issue that affects people in multiple states and, as the minister knows, affects people in South Australia in and around the Edinburgh Air Force base.

I know that my Senate colleagues Senator Faruqi and Senator McCarthy will say something, perhaps in relation more specifically to the report, but I remind the government that the Senate has resolved that reports of committees should be responded to within three months. This is a joint report. I note that the House has a rule that says 'six months', but that doesn't negate the need to meet the resolution of the Senate in respect of responding to those.

I'd like to draw the chamber's attention to the President's report to the Senate on the status of Government responses to Parliamentary Committee reports. At the moment, we have a situation where 246 reports are in the President's report, of which there are 205 outstanding responses from government. So 205 reports out of 246 have not been responded to. I remind the government that the Senate and the parliament initiate inquiries and that they do so as they seek to represent their constituents. The parliament or the Senate calls for submissions, which take a lot of work. A lot of people put a lot of time and effort into submissions to the parliament. Then, of course, we go to places, at taxpayers' expense, and sometimes people come to us at their expense, to allow us to hear from people. A considerable amount of work is done by the secretariat and the committees themselves in respect of developing coherent committee reports. When I say that time has been spent, I talk about time that's been spent by government senators, opposition senators and, indeed, senators on the crossbench.

I appreciate that the government might not always have an affinity with the recommendations. They have the ability to respond by rejecting those recommendations. But certainly there is a moral responsibility for government to respond to all of these inquiries, noting that, in some sense, by not doing so they're not being respectful to the people. In my view, they're also not meeting a constitutional obligation to respond to the parliament. It's in that vein that I'm pleased to hear that Minister Birmingham has indicated that we might get a response by the end of this year. I draw the chamber's attention to the fact that there are so many other reports that have simply not been responded to by government.