Senator SHERRY (6:47 PM) —I will respond briefly as I do not want to unduly hold the time of the Senate. What the minister says is correct: the special appropriations are published in the annual reports. Does anyone have a stack of annual reports in their office? I have one. I have kept them behind my door. Every annual report comes into my office—every one of them. Do you know where that stack reaches now? It is up to my chest. It is well over a metre high.

Senator Murray —And you are tall. You’re taller than me.

Senator SHERRY —I am a few centimetres taller than you, Senator Murray. I have this stack of annual reports in my office—hundreds of them are produced each year. That is fair enough. I do not have a complaint about that. Departments and agencies are required to publish annual reports, and they are on the record. The problem is you have to search through hundreds of different annual reports. I suggest, Senator Colbeck, that you go back and ask for a copy of every annual report to be delivered to your office, if you do not do it already, and just see how high the stack grows. One of the great difficulties with this is that, if you want information that is common to all agencies and departments, you actually have to go through every damn annual report to consolidate all the information across agencies and departments.

Labor and the Democrats are arguing on this occasion—which we think is a special case, given the nature of special appropriations, the importance of it and its growth—that there should be a consolidated register which we can readily go to. That is what we are requesting, and we think that is reasonable in the context of what has occurred and the difficulty in going through all these reports to identify a comprehensive list.

Question negatived.