Has the Ministers Department made payments to the national or State and Territory branches of (a)Australian Chamber of commerce and Industry, (b) Australian Industry Group, (c) National Farmers Federation or (d) Business Council of Australia for consultancies, training and other purposes in (i) 1996-97, (ii) 1997-98, (iii) 1998-99. (iv) 1999-2000, (v) 2000-2001, (vi) 2001-2002 and (vii) 2003-2003 to date; if so, what sums and when.

According to the financial records of the Department of Transport and Regional Services, the Department has made the following payments:

Due to a change in financial management information systems in 1998-99, the Department is unable to automatically access financial records prior to 1 July 1999.

Information prior to 1999 is not readily available because it was stored on the Department's previous financial system. It can be extracted by a manual search of paper records but this would be time consuming and entail significant administrative effort. The profile of payments for prior years is unlikely to vary significantly from that for the period 1999 to 2002.