Arthur Sinodinos (NSW, Liberal Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I am not avoiding it. We talked about something like a $20 billion infrastructure plan before the election, and we will deliver on our promises on infrastructure in a responsible way. Both the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook and the budget will lay out those plans, and I am not going to steal anybody's thunder by revealing them here today. I think you should see them in all their glory in the MYEFO and in the budget.

But it is important to understand that this agreement with the Greens also means that the Intergenerational Report will have different dimensions to it. One of the greatest achievements of Peter Costello was the Intergenerational Report, and the Greens have picked up on that. The whole idea was to look forward, to look at the intergenerational implications of the decisions we take today. And in that context the Greens have also asked for more information around climate change, because with such issues you have to take a longer term perspective. So we will also be doing that as part of this improved budget documentation.

I make it very clear that, as far as the now government are concerned, we will be judged by the content of our decisions. And for us there is no problem with the enhanced transparency that is going to be part of those discussions as a result of the amendments that are now being pushed by the Greens. It was Wayne Swan who at budget time, looking down the barrel of meeting that $300 billion limit in early to mid-December, essentially said, 'That'll be someone else's problem.' Well, we have inherited the problem, and we are going to fix it. So this is not a debate about whether we hit any particular debt limit; this is now a debate, in this context, about greater transparency.

The opposition had the opportunity to come to an agreement with the government, and it would have all been over and we would not have had the agreement with the Greens. But I think we have actually ended up in a better place as a result of the agreement with the Greens. There will be more rationality in this debate.

As to Senator Wong's point, may I point out: of course the Greens and we will not agree on everything. We are not in some sort of an alliance. We have seen in the last few days deep divisions between us and the Greens on other policy issues. So this is not about some marriage of convenience, alliance or whatever.

One of the marks of this Prime Minister, and one of the aspects of this Prime Minister that the opposition had better cotton on to very quickly, is that he grows in the job, whatever job he gets, and as Prime Minister he has shown that you can be pragmatic on the way to pursuing a principle. He has shown pragmatism by his willingness to deal with the Greens, or by allowing us to deal with the Greens, on these matters in order to get to a principle, and the principle is: the enhanced transparency around the presentation of the budget.

May I take this opportunity to say, on issues to do with infrastructure: contrary to what Senator Wong is saying, for us the infrastructure debate is about the public-private split. It is about: what role does public capital play in underpinning private financing of infrastructure? These are all important issues. The beauty of what we have agreed today is that we will now be able to do that in a fully informed way and in such a way that the electorate can actually participate in the process. If we want more honesty in politics, it starts with greater transparency. We have nothing to fear from that sort of transparency.

The budget rules laid down by the Greens in the press release issued by Senator Milne are actually quite stringent, because they talk about borrowing, about debt, for infrastructure—in other words, longer term capital improvement.