Questions

Things Australians have actually tried to find out. Each carries an honest verdict on whether published data can answer it, and where it cannot, why.

• How much has Australia paid the United States and United Kingdom under AUKUS so far, and when?
  Defence publishes one annual total for the whole submarine program -- about $2.06 billion in 2024-25. What it does not publish is the split: how much went overseas, to which partner, on what dates.
  partial defenceCommonwealth of Australiaaggregatednot publishedfragmented
• What has the Commonwealth agreed to pay under the Capacity Investment Scheme?
  DCCEEW publishes who won each tender, where, and at what capacity. It does not publish the agreed price, or any round-level statistic from which one could be inferred.
  no energyCommonwealth of Australianot publishedcommercial
• Which Closing the Gap targets are on track, and which are getting worse?
  Answerable today from the Productivity Commission's Information Repository: 19 targets and over 160 supporting indicators, with progress assessed for 15 of them and the unassessable ones named.
  yes accountabilityCommonwealth of Australia
• Can the government's claimed savings on consultants be reconciled to its own contract data?
  AusTender publishes the contracts and the Audit of Employment publishes an external labour series -- $6.0 billion and 21,970 FTE for 2023-24. What is not published is the bridge from either to the headline savings figure.
  derived spendingCommonwealth of Australiainconsistentfragmented
• How often is a government contract extended or varied without going back to market?
  Answerable with real data work. Amendments are published as data -- over 107,000 of them in the OCDS release -- but a contract history still has to be reconstructed from them.
  derived spendingCommonwealth of Australiaformat
• How much did my council pay each consultant last year?
  An aggregate figure usually appears in the annual report. Which firms, for what, and how much each, generally does not.
  no spendingBrisbane City Councilnot publishedaggregatedformat
• How long does each council actually take to decide a development application?
  Answerable for New South Wales, which publishes a council league table, a performance dashboard and an API covering every DA lodged since 2019. Not answerable on a comparable basis anywhere else.
  partial planningfragmentedinconsistent
• What is the maintenance backlog on my council's roads, and how is it changing?
  Asset condition and renewal figures appear in annual financial statements in summary form; the underlying asset register generally does not.
  partial infrastructureBrisbane City Councilaggregatedformatinconsistent
• Is each major Defence acquisition running to schedule?
  The Major Projects Report still publishes project-level cost. Final Operational Capability dates are marked not for publication for 16 of 21 projects, and the Auditor-General has issued four successive Emphases of Matter about it.
  partial defenceCommonwealth of Australianot publishedaggregatedexempt
• Which companies receive the most federal government contract money?
  Answerable today from AusTender contract notices.
  yes spendingCommonwealth of Australia
• Which agencies refuse the most FOI requests, and on what grounds?
  Answerable today. The OAIC publishes agency-level returns quarterly and annually, as CSV back to 2011-12, with an interactive dashboard filterable by agency, outcome, response time and exemption.
  yes accountabilityCommonwealth of Australia
• How many homes has the Housing Australia Future Fund actually finished, and where are they?
  Housing Australia publishes financing decisions and contracted progress. Treasury reports the housing programs only in aggregate, and the completions figure -- 1,432 as at April 2026 -- reached the public through an audit. The ANAO has recommended publishing delivery against forecast.
  partial housingCommonwealth of Australiaaggregatednot published
• How are borrowers under the government's deposit guarantee schemes faring, and what has the guarantee actually cost?
  Answerable today. Arrears at 0.3% and hardship at 0.9% as at 30 June 2025, three claims paid since the scheme launched, and a chart tracking both against the cash rate.
  yes housingCommonwealth of Australia
• Is Australia on track to build 1.2 million homes by 2029?
  Answerable today, quarterly, and per state. The Council publishes an expected Accord completion date for each jurisdiction, ranging from September 2029 to September 2033 against a June 2029 target.
  yes housingCommonwealth of Australia
• Who is lobbying the Commonwealth, other than the third-party lobbyists on the register?
  The Register of Lobbyists covers third-party lobbyists. In-house government relations staff -- the large majority of people who lobby -- are outside it and are not recorded anywhere.
  no accountabilityCommonwealth of Australianot collected
• Why does the NACC close the referrals it closes?
  The annual report gives the statutory decision for every corruption issue dealt with, and states that about 90 per cent of referrals are excluded at triage as outside jurisdiction. The 204 no-further-action decisions remain a single undifferentiated figure.
  partial accountabilityCommonwealth of Australiaaggregated
• What did my state spend its share of the $9.3 billion social housing and homelessness agreement on, and what did it achieve?
  Answerable today from the jurisdiction's annual Statement of Assurance, which carries funding, detailed expenditure, the matched-funding certification, program outputs and measures against the National Outcomes Framework.
  yes housingCommonwealth of Australia
• Which Senate orders for documents has the government refused, and on what public interest immunity ground?
  The Senate publishes a consolidated list of every order, its compliance status and the public interest immunity grounds raised. It is a single long PDF, so any count or trend has to be extracted by hand.
  partial accountabilityCommonwealth of Australiaformat
• Who will receive the hydrogen and critical minerals production tax incentives, and how much each?
  Nothing to disclose yet -- payments begin in 2027-28. Recorded now because the reporting obligation is far easier to legislate before the first dollar moves than to retrofit afterwards.
  no industryCommonwealth of Australianot collected
• How many households in my postcode have installed rooftop solar or a home battery?
  Answerable today, by postcode and by month, from Clean Energy Regulator small-scale installation data.
  yes energyCommonwealth of Australia
• How much did each Safeguard facility emit against its baseline, and how much did it offset instead of abating?
  Answerable today from the Clean Energy Regulator's facility-level CSV, which carries baselines, covered emissions and units surrendered.
  yes environmentCommonwealth of Australia
• Did the $2 billion Social Housing Accelerator buy homes that would not otherwise have been built?
  Treasury publishes every state's six-monthly Statement of Assurance, with dwellings committed, commenced and completed and funding spent. They come as combined PDFs, so comparing jurisdictions or tracking a series means retyping them.
  partial housingCommonwealth of Australiaformatstale
• How many social housing dwellings are vacant, and for how long, by area?
  Average time to fill a vacant property is published for NSW and audited against target. Duration by small area is not.
  partial housingNew South Walesaggregatedidentifiable
• What does a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic visit cost the taxpayer?
  Answerable today from the published evaluation: $236 per presentation in Commonwealth funding, against $617 for the equivalent emergency department presentation -- a saving of $381.
  yes healthCommonwealth of Australia
• Where does my council's kerbside recycling actually end up?
  Councils publish tonnages and name the sorting facility. What is not published is the proportion of collected material that is ultimately landfilled rather than reprocessed.
  no environmentBrisbane City Councilnot publishedcommercial
• Which lobbyists and organisations met which ministers, and about what?
  The lobbyist register records who is registered to lobby. It does not record meetings.
  no accountabilityCommonwealth of Australianot collectednot published