Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the minister for his response, although I have to say that his words really confirm the need for these amendments. When he spoke about his concern that there might be delays as a result of the minister giving a direction under the special powers to be granted to him, he ignored the importance of accountability. Indeed, he confirmed in his comments that the first the parliament would know about these extra instructions would be when an annual report is presented. We all know that it could be at least a year, and maybe longer, before anyone could make an assessment about whether the direction given was an appropriate one. We are not really talking about delays; we are talking about 14 sitting days. That is not an extraordinary period of delay to achieve an acceptable level of accountability.

Let me go on to talk about the minister’s concern that Infrastructure Australia may just waste its time by dealing with a whole lot of submissions that are put in by various people around the country. Frankly, I hope that Infrastructure Australia will listen to the input of people around Australia who have views on issues that are important. One would assume that a body of that substance, with a $20 million budget, will actually develop some priorities for itself. It will be under no obligation to respond to issues raised with it by the community, but it ought to have a right, where it sees an issue is important, to actually take the initiative and put some time and effort into it. No-one is suggesting that it should waste its time. In fact, I believe that, if Infrastructure Australia thought something was worth doing, the community would think it was worth doing.

For that reason I do not think that the proposed amendments will delay Infrastructure Australia inordinately. In fact, the amendments give it the opportunity to cut through where it needs to cut through, to deal with key issues that perhaps the minister had not even thought of—and there may be some of those. I know that we have a very wise and all-knowing minister, but there will be things that will come forward where the wisdom has not been residing in the government and may come from somewhere else. I think Infrastructure Australia should be able to address those issues if it sees fit.

Finally, in relation to the appointment, I am sorry that the list of criteria that the minister has outlined does not relieve me of my concerns. The previous government had similar kinds of checks and balances. The reality is that we have already seen with this government that, when it wants to appoint its mates to do a particular job, the measures put in place have not prevented that. I am keen to ensure that Infrastructure Australia has a staff that it can have confidence in and that they can work constructively together.

They are the reasons for these amendments and why we are pursuing them. We think these amendments would make the bill better, and I urge the government, as the Senate deals with these issues, to give this a bit of additional thought and perhaps recognise the wisdom of some of these proposals and take them on board.

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