David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks, Minister. My memory of the Ombudsman's evidence was that they expected something like that to occur in relation to the bill as originally drafted. Their concern was that, even with the guidance, there is likely to be a substantial uplift in the work that the Ombudsman's office is required to do. I note that the current budget provides no additional funding for the Ombudsman to do this work. Did the government consider this, and did the government get a resource request from the Ombudsman? That's what they said to the committee. They said very clearly to the committee: 'We're already strapped. We don't have enough resources to do our existing work. This is going to put a whole lot of additional burden on us, with some highly agitated individuals who tend to be quite resource needy because they've got concerns about whistleblowing and it can be complex.' My question is two parts: did the Ombudsman make a resource request and has the government addressed it?