Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee, , 25:40 to 28:05
Discussion focuses on specific unanswered questions related to ministerial travel, FOI redactions, and social media account figures.
Topics: Travel and event costs, Freedom of information, Integrity
Speakers: Senator The Hon Sarah Henderson, Senator Nita Green, Mr Jim Betts
Betts, are you aware that all of the unanswered questions are being responded to this morning?
Oh, yes, that's my understanding.
So they've because Minister, it's it is no coincidence that, and I'm looking at the list of unanswered questions. Uh and I would just the broad topic, departmental and ministerial and international travel, unanswered. Planned Ministerial and International Travel, unanswered. Departmental correspondence related to Minister Wells' Adelaide trip. There is one other one related to the special envoy, which is not related to travel. Request for unredacted version of FOI documents. And that relates to the announcement that was made where there was a redaction when the Prime Minister made the claim that the false claim I would I have said repeatedly in relation to 4.7 million social media accounts being discontinued or shut down. 4.7 million figure mentioned in FOI debt documents unanswered. The breakdown of funding allocated to regional connectivity programs unanswered. And so the questions, Minister, which are unanswered, are clearly questions about which the government is incredibly sensitive. It's no coincidence that those questions in relation to travel remain unanswered up until well, they're still unanswered from the committee's perspective.
Well, Senator respectfully, then we've answered many questions about the Minister's travel. The Minister asked appear to undertake an audit that contained a 260-page report which is publicly available. There's an enormous amount of publicly available information already about that travel. And we will seek to get you the further answers if there was further information we can give you. And I can answer questions for you. I will say I mean the questions on notice cover a range of issues. And we have answered a number of questions outside of the ones that you're talking about that also deal with those same topics.