Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a few remarks in addition to those of my colleague Senator Ludlam and to indicate to the Senate that I will be seeking to move clauses (1), (39), (44), (45), (49), (50), (70), (71) and (78) together. They are the clauses which cover the proposal which was jointly agreed by the coalition and the Greens to set up a joint parliamentary committee to oversee the spending of amounts of $50 million or more and which required the recommendations of the advisory bodies to be laid on the table of the parliament so that the parliament could scrutinise them and know what the recommendations of the advisory bodies were. The advantage of that is that then, if the government chose not to take that advice, the community would be able to see that it was a political decision. Government is absolutely able to make political decisions—that is what they are elected to do—but the community has a right to know what the advisory body has advised and why they advised it. If they make a different decision, the community has the ability to scrutinise that.

It was our grave concern that we heard that Minister Albanese wants more ministerial discretion, to have the power to make the decisions. I noticed in the reasons coming back from the House of Representatives that the argument is that the disclosure of advice from Infrastructure Australia and other advisory boards is not supported because there is already enough rigour and transparency. The reasons then go on and say:

... these amendments could result in commercial in confidence information being disclosed, which could affect how applicants participate.

That terrifies me because it simply says it will all be kept secret and you will not be able to get access to what the advisory committees recommend, the community will not be able to scrutinise it and, whereas before we had a system of public accounts committees so that the parliament could oversee the disbursement of large sums of public money, now we are not going to have that. The people who will know why and how this is to be done are not elected to the parliament. They will be appointed by the government and they will be people whom the government deems to be suitable. We all know what happens with government appointed advisory committees: the government will appoint people to those and make sure they have a majority on those committees.

This is about all of the concerns we have about the issues that are important to Australia being taken into account, the issues we have about prioritising the recommendations and the issues about transparency. Senator Sherry said the Rudd government is not breaking any election promises, but the Prime Minister said that the Rudd government would be a government which improved transparency. Refusing to have a joint committee to oversee the disbursement of money where it is in excess of $50 million on any project is, to me, a refusal to have scrutiny and a refusal to have transparency. The Greens will be insisting on that set of amendments which pertains to the setting up of the joint committee and the requirement that the advisory bodies lay on the table the recommendations they made to the minister and the documentation on which they based those recommendations.