Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Why is the government creating an infrastructure financing unit in the Prime Minister's own Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and sidelining the independent Infrastructure Australia?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. I was noting the number of schools in his electorate that are going to see substantial increases in funding over the next decade and I had hoped he was going to ask me about that.

The infrastructure financing unit addresses a different task to Infrastructure Australia. Infrastructure Australia's job is to assess business plans, rate them and provide the government with advice about the relative merits of different infrastructure projects. The infrastructure financing unit is designed to ensure that we get the maximum benefit from the taxpayers' investment; to ensure that we leverage every dollar we can of taxpayers' money; and to ensure that we get the most infrastructure, the most rail, the most road, the most urban amenity, the most benefits for regional communities, and the most regional rail for the best outcomes. That requires a more creative approach to government financing than we have seen in the past, which has been limited—as the honourable member knows very well—in large part to simply making grants and being an ATM. We have got to do better than that. In these times, we need to make the taxpayer's dollar work harder and go further, and that is what the infrastructure financing unit is doing.