I appreciate the honesty of the Minister’s response, but I am sure he can understand the frustration in this debate, and of course in the wider country. Every response that we receive is different. One suggests that there are medical records; the other suggests that there are not. We just want to know the truth. I understand that he has undertaken to review the 150 FOI-request documents, which is very much appreciated. Perhaps he will report his findings to the House, but there are numerous other documents that we know exist—for example, the AB and ES files that have been withdrawn from the National Archives. If he could commit to putting those in the public domain again, we would be grateful.

As for other documents that may or may not be available, the Minister referenced the fact that the documents are very old. Veterans have been campaigning for access to their records for over 70 years. He said that many of the documents will be in paper form, and that there might not be an auditable trail. I find it very hard to believe that in one of the greatest militaries in the world, there would not be a system for accessing particular documents. Will he look into that as a matter of urgency, and perhaps conduct an inquiry on the location of those historical documents and report back to the House? As I said in my opening remarks, if the documents do not exist and he knows that they do not exist, it is up to the Government to be open and honest, and to explain what happened to the documents, on whose instruction they were destroyed, and why.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House
has considered nuclear test veterans and medical records.

Sitting suspended.