Wagga birth trauma inquiry hearing delayed after committee receives over 4000 submissions

The committee received 4270 submissions from the public between June 21 and August 15, with chair and Animal Justice Party MLC Emma Hurst confirming the unexpected level of engagement had forced them to delay a hearing scheduled for September 9 in Wagga.

Unlike most parliamentary inquiries, the majority of these have come from individuals - not advocacy groups.

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"The date for Wagga is not cancelled - it's postponed," Ms Hurst said.

"It might be a little bit later [than September]. We don't want to delay things, but we also don't want to rush the process and make people feel like their voices weren't heard.

"The most important thing is we didn't want to have a short inquiry in Wagga - we want to give the area the time it deserves."

The deluge of submissions has also created a bottleneck for their online publication. At the time of publication, only 150 submissions had been published.

The inquiry's website advises there is a delay in their publication due to the high volume of submissions.

Ms Hurst said they would be published as soon as possible, but needed to be audited to ensure the didn't contain details or comment that could be prejudicial.

She said it was important the committee had time to go through the submissions with care to ensure the hearings selected suitable witnesses, and allocated the necessary time for each hearing.

"The committee wouldn't have been able to go through even the majority of submissions by then, because they have a process of making sure people understand confidentiality, looking for adverse mentions and things like that before it goes public," she said.

"That's going to be a huge process given the large number of submissions.

"It just goes to show how important the inquiry is, and how desperately needed it is."

Like many frequent flyers in Wagga, Ms Hurst also said the flight schedule added complications.

"What we'd originally planned was a day trip to Wagga on the ninth," she said.

"Looking at the flights, it would have cut the day short significantly.

"We're trying to find another day so we can spend a night in Wagga so that we can spend an entire day and hear from as many people as we possibly can. I don't want a shortened day."

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