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

The government will be opposing the jointly sponsored amendments. There might be some validity in the claims made by the opposition and the Greens if, in fact, we had not sought to increase transparency, over and above that which we saw from the former government, in the assessment of these projects. The point I would make is that we have gone well beyond what the former government did in this regard in other areas. The Nation-Building Funds Bill 2008 already provides for rigour and transparency in relation to payments from the funds—much greater levels of rigour, I would argue, than we ever saw from the former government with respect to other allocations for particular projects. We have improved transparency and accountability.

The spending on specific projects is to be assessed by independent advisory bodies against evaluation criteria, and that is a significant change. The projects will then be considered through the budget process, and the infrastructure projects will be reported in the budget papers. Having improved the rigour and accountability of projects through an independent advisory body, we do not see why it is then necessary to add to the existing accountability processes, which are significant—all of us from the government and the opposition are very well used to the rigours of the estimates process. We fail to see why it is necessary to add yet another duplicative parliamentary process to the existing rigour of the Senate estimates process, given that we have included independent advisory bodies in the bill—which, as said, we did not see from the former government.

The annual appropriation acts will include the maximum limit on the amount that can be paid out in a particular financial year. The annual limit on expenditure will provide that parliament has the mechanism to oversee the rate at which amounts are being expended. As we all know from estimates, there are a whole range of projects which are funded through the appropriation bills and which are subject to enormous rigour at estimates. So we do not see why there needs to be the creation of yet another parliamentary committee beyond that which exists at the present time.