During the hearing, opposition spokesperson for Defence, Senator Mark Bishop quizzed Defence CIO Air Vice-Marshal John Monaghan on IT services and outsourcing.

"I would like to discuss some detail that was contained in a recent press report in Computerworld Australia. What is the status of IT support at Defence?" Bishop said. "Is it true as alleged in the article that there is a backlog of 6000 requests which are taking up to a month to process?"

To this Monaghan said the data that was presented in the article was provided not by Defence, but "by somebody who had access to Defence data, and it was accurate for part of the services that we deliver."

"The backlog has in fact reduced a little since then, by in the order of 1000," Monaghan said, adding that the backlog is not related to any of the services delivered by outsourcer Kaz but by services delivered by regional IT departments.

"Those regional IT departments had been under some pressure because of a major rollout of upgrades to our systems and, once those systems had rolled out, those regional staff have been able to get on with reducing the backlogs and providing a better service."