Australians are familiar with the adversarial shouting and theatrics of parliamentary Question Time, but it’s in the studious, cross-party House and Senate committees where the real work happens.

In many ways, parliamentary committees are the best part of our political system.

Senators and MPs from across the country and the political spectrum come together to work through difficult issues away from the media spotlight.

But this constructive work has become a black hole into which expert testimony, community experience and months of effort quietly disappear.

Since the Albanese government was elected in 2022, more than 100 House committee inquiries have been completed. Of these inquiries, the government has failed to respond to 55.

Responses are due in six months. Half these report responses are overdue by more than a year, 25 per cent by more than 18 months.

In the Senate, the picture is bleaker – more than 150 inquiry reports tabled since the 2022 election have received no government response at all.

Deadlines exist to ensure accountability and prevent politicised discretion.

Inquiries are set up to tackle complex areas of policy requiring thorough investigation.

Committees review written submissions, hear evidence from witnesses and debate appropriate responses before tabling a final report including recommendations.

The outcomes of this process are being ignored by this government, and it’s undermining our democracy.

The reports being ignored deal with serious issues. They cover some of Australia’s most urgent policy challenges: Terrorism, illicit drugs, online safety, migration, plastic pollution and energy security.

More than 3500 experts, industry bodies, academics and everyday Australians have invested significant time and resources to inform these inquiries in good faith.

They do so because they believe the government will listen and they hope it will have the guts to act. But their work goes unrecognised.

So, why the silence? Is it inattention, incompetence or something more insidious?

Take the landmark You win some, you lose more inquiry into online gambling harm, led by the late Peta Murphy MP.

I served on that committee. It has been more than 950 days since this report was presented to the Parliament. It contains 31 recommendations, including phasing out gambling ads, like we did with tobacco a generation ago. Yet the government has still not responded.

The Prime Minister has become a master contortionist when asked why his government has not responded to this report. When there’s overwhelming public support for reducing gambling harm, why is responding to this inquiry so difficult?

It may be because gambling companies are big donors to both the major political parties.

Sporting codes and commercial media outlets make a lot of money from gambling ads and have the government’s ear. And the gambling lobby is noticeably present in Parliament House most sitting weeks.

Ignoring the good work of parliamentary committees is a failure of political integrity, accountability and respect.

By busying MPs with committee work, only to disregard their findings, the government wastes public resources and misses opportunities to improve the quality of our policies and laws.

Meanwhile, complex societal challenges don’t wait politely for governments to catch up:

Since the Drowning in Plastic Waste report was tabled in May 2024, another 250,000 tonnes of plastic is polluting our environment.

A further 620,000 Australians are likely to have been affected by financial abuse while the recommendations from the inquiry into financial abuse have languished.

In the time the government has sat on the Murphy report, we continue to be bombarded by gambling ads. Australians have lost another $85 billion dollars to gambling and too many suffer the consequences of gambling addiction – financial hardship, poor mental health, relationship breakdowns and violence.

These are avoidable harms. Harms that parliamentary committees warned the government about, and harms that could have been reduced had the government acted on recommendations produced by inquiries.

When governments ignore expert advice with impunity, those already suffering the consequences of policy failure pay the price.

Other jurisdictions have begun implementing the kind of reforms we need. Britain, for example, has created publicly accessible dashboards that track the progress of implementation of inquiry recommendations.

This kind of transparency would be a great start, allowing Australians to see whether their government is listening or whether it is just using these processes to buy time on difficult issues or make backbenchers look and feel busy.

The government must be held accountable, to honour the thousands of people who participate in parliamentary inquiries in good faith – the experts, advocates and community members who give their time, share their experiences and trust that their government will take them seriously.

Right now, that trust is being squandered.

Kate Chaney is the independent MP for the Western Australian federal seat of Curtin