Senate Estimates – Questions on Notice published

Posted on August 3, 2012. Filed under: Uncategorized |

Hi All

The majority of questions taken on notice by CSIRO at the Senate Estimates – Economics Committee hearing on the 28th of May 2012 have been published on the APH website:

http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate_Committees?url=economics_ctte/estimates/bud_1213/DIISRTE/index.htm

For convenience I have also posted the relevant questions in a zip file posted on our Documents section of the site.

Initial review of the material has already uncovered a number of factual inaccuracies as well information which is inconsistent with documentation we have received from other sources to date.

A number of the responses to questions on notice have also been carefully qualified in a manner in which the initial question did not, thus allowing a response of ‘formal complaint’ to be qualified in a question that did not specifically qualify the requirement for ‘formal” complaints. This effectively enables a negative response in relation to complaints because the response is in the context of formal complaints. There may have been dozens informal complaints or allegations relating to misconduct but because the response has been couched carefully in the context of formal complaint they can respond truthfully that there were no ‘formal’ complaints despite being aware of any number of other informal complaints which one could reasonably interpret to be intended in the original context of the question. The question for the CSIRO Executive Management Team is “Why have you changed the context in relation to your response when the qualification did not appear in the original question issued by the senator?”

This is the kind of childish response we have come to expect from our senior bureaucrats!

“Yes, my hand was in the cookie jar but I did not take any cookies!”, “I smoked but I didn’t inhale!”

A full critique of the responses provided to the questions on notice will appear in a future posting but we would encourage you to have a look for yourself and let us know of any consistencies you become aware of. (anonymously if you prefer!)