Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law) Share this | Hansard source

Through you, Chair: I listened to you with respect. I did not interject. I am entitled to respond in a considered way to at least some of the points that have been made. It is a touch hypocritical to talk about a $20 million administration process when we looked at the hundreds of millions of dollars in costs associated with your privatisation.

The third set of issues relates to the range of amendments that have been added to the oversight, transparency and accountability process. I want to make the fundamental point—and I made it earlier today—that we have set up a process of independent assessment for projects that will flow as a consequence of the Building Australia Fund. We have set up an independent, transparent assessment process far more ethical, far more accountable and far more transparent than anything the previous Liberal-National coalition did for any of the expenditure programs that they oversaw in government. What we had tonight and earlier this afternoon—