One Commonwealth department report has been re-written 16 times, with claims that the document was redrafted until it said what department bosses wanted to hear.

Complaints about a lack of aged care on Christmas and Cocos islands led the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development to hire a private contractor, Australian Healthcare Associates, for a report in May 2014.

But almost a year later the report – which cost about $60,000 - has not been released.

The department has admitted that there are now 17 drafts of the report in existence, but they will not be made public.

The department has told Fairfax Media reporters that it was not trying to strip the report of any bad news, claiming instead that the rewrites were to make sure the consultants had complied with their brief.

Christmas Island Shire president Gordon Thomson and former administrator of the Indian Ocean Territories Jon Stanhope say it appears that the document keep being back to Australian Health Associates until its findings match the department’s stance.

Christmas Island Shire is facing an aged-care crisis, with only basic version home help available, despite up to 110 aging residents likely to need full-time care in coming years.

The shire says the Federal department does not want to provide the same level of care as elderly citizens on the mainland enjoy.

“The department often gets a report and then they ask the consultant to change the report, which I think is a very strange practice but it is the practice,” the shire president said.

“It’s been going on for many years.

“Let us assume the department is asking the consultant to tailor the report for the benefit of the department.

“I don't think these 17 versions of the report are about correcting grammar, I think they are about insisting that the consultant gives the department what it wants.

“It's a questionable practice, they should provide an explanation of this practices.

“Why is it necessary that a paid consultant should be re-writing a report at the behest of a department?”

Former administrator of the territories, Jon Stanhope, has lodged an FOI application to see the documents, but says the department is demanding a $4,000 fee for their release.

“One is entitled to ask why,” the former ACT chief minister said.

“What it is about aged care in the Indian Ocean Territories that the department and the minister are embarrassed to reveal is that there is none and that is what this report will reveal.”