Awaiting a government response · as at 30 June 2026

Committee reports the government has not answered.

House of Representatives committee reports

The House asks for a response within six months. 33 of them are past it.

Senate committee reports

The Senate asks for a response within three months. 76 of them are past it.

For 46 of the Senate reports — and for every one of the 44 in the House — the only thing the government has said is that its response is “being considered”. That is its own phrase, from status reports it tables itself.

The longest wait is 11 years, 9 months — 4,298 days since the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation committee tabled Freedom of Information Amendment (New Arrangements) Bill 2014 [Provisions] on 25 November 2014.

Senate committee reports awaiting a government response, 2003–2026

Monthly. Reconstructed from the tabling dates of every report and every response in the Senate’s registers, so it counts what the record shows today — a floor, not an exact historical count. There is no equivalent for the House: it publishes no register of responses going back that far, so its backlog can be shown as it stands but not as it moved. How this is built.

Table view — backlog at each year end

As at	Awaiting a response	Longest wait	Over five years
2003-12-31	43	1,414 days	0
2004-12-31	56	1,780 days	0
2005-12-31	56	2,145 days	2
2006-12-31	59	2,510 days	3
2007-12-31	46	2,765 days	3
2008-12-31	74	2,855 days	4
2009-12-31	86	2,626 days	4
2010-12-31	80	2,991 days	6
2011-12-31	76	3,356 days	6
2012-12-31	57	3,722 days	4
2013-12-31	68	4,087 days	4
2014-12-31	81	4,452 days	5
2015-12-31	121	4,817 days	8
2016-12-31	141	5,183 days	10
2017-12-31	145	5,548 days	11
2018-12-31	170	5,913 days	15
2019-12-31	180	6,278 days	22
2020-12-31	213	6,644 days	35
2021-12-31	266	7,009 days	50
2022-12-31	301	7,374 days	71
2023-12-31	352	7,739 days	102
2024-12-31	247	8,105 days	49
2025-12-31	259	8,470 days	58
2026-09-01 (observed)	84	4,298 days	14

The deadline is not a deadline

Of 1,486 responses to Senate committee reports tabled between 2000 and 2026, 64 arrived inside the required three months — 4.3 per cent. The median took 420 days. More than half took longer than a year.

The House keeps no comparable record going back that far. What the Speaker does record is his verdict on each response he lists: of the 61 in his most recent schedule, 11 arrived within six months — 18 per cent, over months rather than decades, so the two figures are not comparable.

None of this is a story about one government. Attribute every late response to whoever tabled it, or to whoever was in office when the report was tabled: the two readings disagree about which government performs worst, and on neither reading does any of the four reach one response in ten inside the deadline. Both readings, side by side →

What this site is

When a parliamentary committee reports, the government is expected to say what it will do about the recommendations. The Senate has asked for that within three months since 14 March 1973; the House within six since 29 September 2010. Often it does not come, or comes years later, and there is no single public record of which reports are still waiting.

This is that record. Each register follows its presiding officer — the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House each report on the status of government responses, at roughly six-monthly intervals — and publishes what he records, including the reports he marks as answered. Every page shows the date of the document behind it and says what that document does not cover. The whole dataset is public, and corrections are logged.

Nothing here is an opinion about any recommendation — only whether an answer was given, and when.

Longest outstanding

Across both chambers. The counts are kept apart because the rules differ, but a report waiting eleven years is waiting eleven years whichever house it was tabled in. All ten are Senate reports: that backlog reaches back to 2014 and the House’s only to 2020. The longest-waiting House report — Report 485: Cyber Resilience: Inquiry into Auditor-General’s Reports 1 and 13 (2019-20), at 2,092 days — comes 13th.

Waiting	Report	Committee	Chamber	Tabled
4,298 days	Freedom of Information Amendment (New Arrangements) Bill 2014 [Provisions]	Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation	Senate	25 Nov 2014
3,484 days	Report 460—Public Sector Governance Inquiry based on Auditor- General’s report 29 (2015-16)	Public Accounts and Audit—Joint Statutory	Senate	16 Feb 2017
3,451 days	Freedom of speech in Australia	Human Rights—Joint Statutory	Senate	21 Mar 2017
3,283 days	Report 463—Commonwealth Financial Statements—Inquiry based on Auditor-General’s report No. 33	Public Accounts and Audit—Joint Statutory	Senate	5 Sept 2017
2,876 days	Report 472—Commonwealth Procurement – Second report: Inquiry based on Auditor-General’s reports 9 and 12 (2017-18) and 61 (2016-17), dated October 2018	Public Accounts and Audit—Joint Statutory	Senate	17 Oct 2018
2,832 days	Freedom of Information Legislation Amendment (Improving Access and Transparency) Bill 2018	Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation	Senate	30 Nov 2018
2,709 days	Report 477—Commonwealth financial statements – Second report; and Foreign investment in real estate: Inquiries based on Auditor-General’s reports 24 and 48 (2017-18)	Public Accounts and Audit—Joint Statutory	Senate	2 Apr 2019
2,709 days	Report 478—Issuing of a Certificate under section 37 of the Auditor- Generalʼs Act 1997	Public Accounts and Audit—Joint Statutory	Senate	2 Apr 2019
2,709 days	Report 479—Australian Government security arrangements: Inquiry based on Auditor-General’s reports 38 and 43 (2017-18)	Public Accounts and Audit—Joint Statutory	Senate	2 Apr 2019
2,548 days	2nd report of 2019—Referrals made July 2019	Public works—Joint Standing	Senate	10 Sept 2019

All 44 in the House register → All 84 in the Senate register →