Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Here we have a proposal to spend $43 billion of taxpayers’ money—and I emphasise that. It is not Senator McLucas’s money. If it were Senator McLucas’s money, you could be assured that the first thing she would do is get a cost-benefit analysis done. She would insist that, if she were investing $43 billion, she knew she would get a return on her investment. Very few people currently in this chamber will be alive in 30 or 40 years down the track when, as the implementation study says, you might get a return—but absolutely nobody believes that.