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

I thank the minister for their comments. The point of my question would be: if the department is doing such a great job of collecting this information, why don't we have it and why are we consistently having problems and cost blowouts with our infrastructure spending? If we had one database across the country of all these costings and were using that effectively, we could reduce this cost blowouts, and that is absolutely critical if we're going to have effective infrastructure spending. These are my significant concerns on this.

I go back to Inland Rail, which was costed at $8 billion. It's now $30 billion. The CopperString project, which originated at $1.5 billion, is now at $5 billion, and the Queensland government has never released a business case demonstrating whether it provides value for money or not. These are questions of transparency, questions of integrity and questions of spending accountability. The community is expecting higher standards of government. The government has promised to do politics differently, and that is why I'm seeking these reasonable amendments to this bill.

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