The federal infrastructure department has rejected suggestions that officials were derelict in their duties after relying on advice about citation errors in a submission concerning Australia’s social media ban.

The issue arose during a Senate inquiry into the government’s social media ban amendment bill, after questions were raised about claims in a departmental submission that citation errors identified in the age assurance technology trial report were the result of AI hallucinations.

The claims were aired shortly before reporting identified several errors in the trial report.

At the time, officials relayed advice from the Australian Centre for Cyber Security (ACCS), the organisation that undertook the age assurance trial, that the errors were caused by links breaking between publication of the report and the Senate hearing.

Senator Fatima Payman questioned that response in her dissenting report, asking whether officials had been derelict in their duties by not independently verifying the advice provided by ACCS.

In a letter to the committee chair tabled this week, department secretary Jim Betts rejected that suggestion. He said officials were not failing in their duties when giving evidence based on advice that, on its face, could reasonably be accepted as accurate.

“The representations made by officials were based on information available to them at the time and were honestly and reasonably held,” Betts said.

The department said it had continued investigating the issue since the Senate hearing. It said ACCS had subsequently provided replacement citations for the erroneous references and would correct the report online.

ACCS has denied that the citation errors were caused by AI hallucinations.

The department declined to answer further questions about the report.