Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We had some interesting statements made today by the minister in the chamber. These were statements he made in an interview this morning. He said that government is going to make decisions based on evidence in the infrastructure area, but quite clearly what we are going to do is limit the amount of evidence that is available on which to make a decision. Firstly—and the minister has contested this—we argue that the amendments that have been made to Infrastructure Australia do in fact reduce the autonomy and transparency of the work that is done by Infrastructure Australia. It will give much more control to the government over the release of the reports that are done by Infrastructure Australia, so the evidence that is there is not going to be available for us to judge what the government is doing. Secondly, of course, it enables the minister to direct or exclude certain classes of infrastructure from being examined.

We are going to make decisions on the basis of the evidence, but we are actually going to control what the evidence is. We will then say, 'Now we've got the evidence supporting our decisions, but that's precisely because we have prevented Infrastructure Australia looking at the entire picture.' As we know, they will be precluded from making assessments on very important urban rail projects. So we will have this situation where Infrastructure Australia are going to be examining road funding and doing cost-benefit analyses on those road projects but will be legislatively proscribed from taking into account what might in fact be a far more efficient and effective way of dealing with those urban mobility problems. It is all very well to say we are going to make our decisions based on the evidence; when you are doctoring, limiting and controlling that evidence, that then becomes a pretty hollow statement.

I am very interested in the cabinet subcommittee that has been set up today. I wonder to what extent this is an attempt to bring this back into the fold of the Liberal Party? Having the National Party in charge of the infrastructure portfolio may indeed cause problems. I would be interested to know from the assisting minister: if the Prime Minister is unable to chair the meetings, whose job would it be? Would it be your job? Would you be delegated to chair those meetings?

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