Mr. Dean Sullivan:

We will both be looking at that together then, and we will see what the numbers indicate. We will certainly aim to get information back to the Senator quickly if it is any different from what he has been advised in terms of the retirement number of 59.

The Senator's point on recognising the importance of predicting and planning for retirements is well made. That takes us back to the discussion we were having earlier on recruitment processes and the centrality of Professor Murray's rule in terms of trying to speed things up a little. If we know a post is going to become vacant because of a retirement on date X, we really should be working backwards from that to ensure the gap is a small as possible. That is related to, but different from, the workforce planning issue. Clearly, we can fill posts from within the local workforce. In that regard, we need to have coming off the training conveyor belt enough new registrars to become consultants and so on. We also need to try to fish in other ponds. The Senator highlighted some of the challenges in that regard. We will examine the retirement numbers and share them with the Senator. We will double-check them as quickly as possible.