Anthony Albanese’s government stands accused of tick-and-flick responses and ignoring issues stacked in a growing pile of unresponded parliamentary committee work.
Dozens of detailed reports, put together by parliamentarians serving on committees, are sitting in the government’s in-tray.
The best-known example in recent years was the “You win some, you lose more” report on gambling harm led by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy.
While that received a government response in May – more than 1000 days after it was tabled – others are waiting even longer.
Alan Hewitt, president of the one-man Australian Public Interest Alliance, calls the pile the “Too Hard Basket” and has has set up a tracking website of the same name following the inaction.
As of this week, he counts 79 reports across a wide range of issues waiting, with all but five ballooning past recommended response times.
That includes a landmark reform for a human rights act – recommended in May 2024 – and other issues including modern slavery, financial abuse, and misuse of public funds.
Mr Hewitt takes issue with the wait times and a tactic to sidestep substantive responses.
“The government is supposed to answer (reports) within a set time: three months for the Senate, six for the House,” he told AAP.
“Since 2022, 263 of the 634 responses tabled have instead closed the report with the same sentence: given the passage of time, ‘a substantive government response is no longer appropriate’.
“That isn’t an answer. It’s a cop-out.”
One such response was tabled in April in response to a 2018 probe into the use of au pairs by Peter Dutton while home affairs minister.
Assistant minister Patrick Gorman defended the language, saying the coalition government should have dealt with it but “failed to respond to this report and hundreds of others”.
In its response, the government effectively overlooked the key recommendation of the committee: to compel ministers to declare if they made interventions on visa matters within guidelines or not.
Mr Hewitt, who volunteers for WA teal independent Kate Chaney, said committee work deserved better.
“The fix is simple: answer each recommendation, even if the answer is no,” he said.
“MPs and senators spend months taking evidence from the public on hard problems. That work deserves a yes or a no, not a sentence that says nothing.”
In other cases, it’s clear policy work is happening, but not necessarily aligned with a report.
In April 2025, in its “no time to waste” report, the environment committee recommended minister Murray Watt pursue a “circular economy act” to improve waste management and recycling.
Since then, Senator Watt has worked with state ministers on a circular economy roadmap, and regulations, but not law reform.
Mr Gorman said the government respected the lawmakers who served on committees and members of the public who submitted to them.
“It is appropriate that where significant policy matters are raised that ministers and their departments take the necessary time to consider these responses,” he said.
Unanswered committee reports do not always mean inaction.
Sometimes the caravan simply moves on.
The longest unanswered report in Mr Hewitt’s database – a 2014 report on freedom of information – is a case in point.
That report, put together by six senators who all no longer serve in parliament, does not require a response as it was linked to a dropped Tony Abbott-era plan to axe the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
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