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

Even though the Greens' amendment is an absolute cracker, I indicate that we will support opposition amendments (7) and (8), and I will foreshadow that for that reason I will withdraw the forthcoming Australian Greens amendment (6) and (8) respectively, as they are again very similar in intent. I might speak to those when I get to speak to my other amendments, but in the meantime I am happy to support these two from Senator Conroy.

The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN: The question is that amendments (7) and (8) be agreed to.

Question agreed to.

I withdraw Greens amendments (6) and (8), as amendments to that effect were just carried by the Senate on behalf of the opposition. Amendments (9) and (15) are very different amendments and I am happy for the questions to be put separately, even though I understand I have opposition support for both of them. I move Greens amendments (9) and (15) on sheet 7482 together.

(9) Schedule 1, item 8, page 6 (after line 12), at the end of section 5B, add:

(6) Infrastructure Australia must cause the method approved under subsection (3) to be reviewed:

  (a) no later than 6 months after the commencement of this section; and

  (b) every 24 months after that first review.

(15) Schedule 1, item 39, page 17 (line 15), at the end of section 39C, add:

  ; (d) details of each method of preparing cost benefit analyses approval of which was in force under subsection 5B(3) at any time during the year, including the weight required to be assigned to each factor the method required to be taken into account.

These are both very important amendments. The first one, amendment (9), goes to the method of cost-benefit analysis that is undertaken, and this, really, is what the decisions that get made hinge upon—or at least the decisions that get published by way of advice from Infrastructure Australia to the minister.

What we think needs to be addressed—and these two amendments give effect to this—is firstly, that the cost-benefit analysis methodology that is used—not by IA but by proponents who are bringing some of these plans and proposals forward—is grievously flawed. We see this time after time; for example, in justifying urban freeway projects—and you might wonder how it is that, against the catastrophic cost of installing multi-lane urban freeways through existing communities and urban fabric, somehow a cost-benefit analysis can come back—if you are cooking the numbers—and say, 'the benefits of this freeway can amount to billions and billions of dollars'. You might wonder how on earth those benefits are calculated. It is relatively easy—and we ran into this problem with the National Broadband Network—to calculate the costs of an infrastructure project, because we have been doing it for decades. But how on earth do you calculate the benefits? You can add up the costs—the cost of materials, the cost of labour, the cost of planning—but calculating the benefits of these things is inordinately difficult. And if project planners want the foregone conclusion to be that the urban freeway takes precedence over the urban rail, they just fudge figures and make numbers up, and effectively say, 'all that time that you will be spending zooming along the open road—now that we have decongested the freeway—adds up to billions of dollars in time saved because you got to work quicker'. These numbers are just pure hallucination. They mean nothing. What the Australian Greens want, as the amendment says, 'no later than six months after the commencement of this section' and then every 24 months after that first review, is to look at whether the cost-benefit analyses are actually performing for us—against social, environmental and economic costs and benefits; not simply performing an accounting trick that, in fact, you could get to deliver whatever result you wanted. A couple of years back, a Professor Henry Ergas—

Senator Conroy interjecting—

who Senator Conroy has some familiarity with; Professor Ergas, frustrated that the Australian government, with the support of the Greens, had not undertaken a CBA of the National Broadband Network, undertook to do it himself. Again—