Submissions, witnesses, questions … then nothing. Australian government cites ‘passage of time’ for silence on reports

Stacks of government responses – each of them the same – to various committee reports, distributed in the Parliament House press gallery. Photograph: Josh Butler/The Guardian

In the Parliament House press gallery is an area known simply as “the boxes” – a wall of pigeonholes for mail, a bulletin board of real estate listings and upcoming events, and class photos of the press gallery cohorts of years past.

It’s a spot for hardcopy press release distribution, with a glass-fronted wooden display case that in pre-digital days housed a paper copy of the prime minister’s daily schedule. It now contains one piece of paper – a media alert from 2007 for one of John Howard’s last prime ministerial press conferences.