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

The Australian Greens will be supporting both of these opposition amendments. It is just remarkable to hear Senator Johnston trying to justify opposing an amendment that would make a summary of evaluated projects live every quarter. What exactly is the problem with that? Infrastructure provision is not necessarily just best left to some kind of closed cabal of so-called experts. That is partly because this is taxpayers' money being expended and partly because people in regional and local communities have to live with the decisions that you make, such as dropping freeways over their backyards, putting coal rails past schools, choosing to extend an electricity grid to a particular region or choosing not to, or provision of clean water. People have to live with these decisions. I find it remarkable that the government would oppose much more frequent updating and publication of the progress of evaluations in some of these audits. I congratulate the opposition for bringing these forward. Again, they are similar to amendments that the Australian Greens had proposed. We are very happy to support them.