Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move amendments (1) to (4), as circulated in my name, together:

(1) Clause 6, page 10 (line 27), before "The Ministers", insert "(1)".

(2) Clause 6, page 10 (after line 30), at the end of the clause, add:

(2) Before making a declaration under subsection (1) in relation to an area (the proposed area) of the Australia economy, the Minister must arrange for the Minister administering the Productivity Commission Act 1988 (the Productivity Minister) to, under paragraph 6(1)(a) of that Act, refer to the Productivity Commission for inquiry and report the matter of the existence of a market failure or other economic rationale for the proposed area being declared to be a priority area of the Australian economy.

(3) In referring the matter to the Productivity Commission for inquiry, the Productivity Minister must, under paragraph 11(1)(d) of the Productivity Commission Act 1998, require the Productivity Commission to make recommendations in relation to the matter, including recommendations for resolving the market failure.

(4) For the purposes of paragraph 6(1)(a) of the Productivity Commission Act 1998, the matter mentioned in subsection (2) is taken to be a matter relating to industry, industry development and productivity.

(3) Clause 71, page 44 (after line 18), at the end of the clause, add:

(4) Despite regulations made for the purposes of paragraph 44(2)(b) of the Legislation Act 2003, section 42 (disallowance) of that Act applies to a direction under subsection (1) of this section.

(4) Clause 91, page 57 (lines 2 and 3), omit "within 5 years after the commencement of this section", substitute "before any amounts are credited to the Account under subsection 52(2) or (3)".

I have three substantive amendments to the bill, amendments which I believe are constructive and will improve the bill. I support the bill, because I believe it is absolutely incumbent upon us to help drive the decarbonisation and digitisation agenda for this country to help our long-term productivity and prosperity. However, I'm putting forward these amendments because I believe we need to ensure integrity of government spending—because the money that goes through this parliament is not our money; it is the money of the people of Australia—and because we're facing interest rate costs on our borrowing that are extraordinary, so we must ensure every dollar is spent effectively.

The first deals with priority areas in which the fund can make investments. Under the bill, the minister can designate whatever industries he or she likes to receive investments from the fund. There is an opportunity to tighten the designation so that investments can flow only into those sectors where there's an economic justification for it. My amendment would require the Productivity Commission to consider potential priority areas before a designation is made. This would prevent public money being invested where capital markets are already working and where there is no justification for government intervention. It would also prevent Australia investing public money in propping up industries where the cost of making more things in Australia means consumers bear an unreasonable cost and the cost of decarbonisation increases. While, legitimately, this country would like to make more things in Australia, we need to be careful about continuing to support industries where we cannot be cost competitive with other countries in the long term.

The second deals with the investment mandate, which sets the rules by which the fund can make its investments. With this bill we're being asked to support the creation of the fund without knowing what the fund's investment mandate would be. I accept that there are circumstances where this is appropriate but I believe it is best if parliament has a power to disallow a mandate which would not be supported by one or other of its chambers. The counterargument to this is that the government's other off-budget investment vehicles do not have disallowable mandates and the National Reconstruction Fund should not be treated any differently. It's a fair point, but I believe there's an opportunity to improve the accountability of these vehicles through the disallowance process. Rather than allowing future investment vehicles to adopt an inferior practice, we should insist on improved practice and work to raise standards across the other, already legislated, funds.

The third deals with a statutory review of the fund. The bill requires independent reviews of the fund every five years, which is a sensible provision, but I would like to go a step further and require that the first review be completed before the government can provide any additional resourcing. Simply ensuring that the fund is working as intended before it is provided with an additional $10 billion of public money is a sensible and reasonable requirement.

As I said in the beginning, my goal is to be constructive. I believe that each of these amendments is constructive, sensible and reasonable. I believe the amendments would enhance the integrity of this off-budget spending and improve the confidence the community can have in this fund, and I believe they're worthy of the chamber's support.

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