Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

I understand that the Senate has asked for an indication about OPD compliance. Of course, the government appreciates Senator Davey's interest in the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and is working to comply with the order. Given the extremely broad parameters of Senator Davey's request, a considerable amount of departmental and agency resources is being expended to respond. An IT search of the department and MDBA systems identified over one million documents as in scope of the request. Within the department alone, the documents in scope number over 850,000. The standard assumption used in FOI requests is that it takes one minute to review each document. Based on this, to review each document would take one person working full time 8½ years. The department and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority are working to narrow the scope of the search, to identify a volume of documents that can be reasonably reviewed by officials to manage any sensitivities while ensuring that all documents that can be provided to the Senate given these constraints are, to fulfil the intent of the order. Continuing to order these documents will not speed up this process.