Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the minister for that response. If that is the case—which was the reason that I put these questions a little while ago—I would appreciate that. I will also seek a little more information while we are at it. Could the minister point to me where there are, in any act, regulation or decision, criteria before any current minister or Commonwealth agency that explicitly address sensitivity to future energy prices—oil and gas—aside from considerations there might be in increasing those prices as a result of carbon levies or carbon taxes or whatever form that may take? I am talking specifically about the situation on world oil and gas markets to which Australia will not be immune when these prices go north again. Because quite frankly, Minister, I cannot find it. I hope you will speak to the amendment that I am about to put and perhaps give us some tangible reasons as to why you are intending, as I believe you are, to vote those amendments down. All the amendments do is put a safety net under large tranches of Commonwealth funding, particularly for road infrastructure, that would cause the minister to at least have regard to those matters.

As I said in the second reading debate, I am not putting handcuffs on the minister and I am not binding him to any form of decision one way or another; I am asking that these matters be explicitly addressed and reported on before we commit the Commonwealth to tens of billions of dollars of funding on infrastructure which may well shortly be obsolete. Those are the matters on which I would seek any advice that you are able to provide us with now and certainly anything that you are able to provide us with subsequently.