Senator Alston asked the Minister representing the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, upon notice, on 30 March 1993:

  (1) Does the Department routinely disseminate or circulate all or some of the media releases of its responsible Minister or Ministers, to organisations apart from the national media organisations; if so, for what reasons are Ministerial media releases circulated by the department, and to how many individuals or organisations.

  (2) For each, and which, Ministerial media release circulated in the past 18 months, what was the estimated cost of printing and circulating the releases, and how many copies of the release were circulated.

  (3) Does the department circulate copies of some or all of the speeches made by the Minister; if so, for each of those circulated in the past 18 months, what was the estimated cost of printing and circulating the speech and how many copies of the speech were circulated.

Senator Collins —The Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs has provided the following answer to the honourable senator's question:

  (1) The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) does not disseminate or circulate Ministerial media releases.

  (2) Nil.

  (3) The Commission does not regularly circulate copies of speeches made by the Minister. Over the past 18 months, four of the Minister's speeches were included in publications produced and distributed by ATSIC. These were:

  a speech, which was included in a booklet with a range of other speeches, to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum. 5000 copies have been distributed.

  Three speeches to the UN working Group on Indigenous populations, which were included in a booklet which contained all of the Australian contributions. 5000 copies have been circulated.

  The costs are unable to be estimated as they were included in the overall costs of the two publications.

  The Commission is satisfied that there is no basis to the allegations in questions (1), (2) and (3) and therefore will not be conducting an investigation.