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

I move Australian Greens amendment (7) on sheet 7482:

(7) Schedule 1, item 8, page 6 (after line 4), after subparagraph 5B(1)(c)(ii), insert:

  (iia) deliberative engagement and consultation with local communities; and

  (iib) principles of integrated design; and

This is an important amendment; in fact, it goes to the heart of the Australian Greens' wish and our vision to democratise infrastructure. If there was one single thing that we could do to improve legislation like this, and to improve what gets delivered to communities and to people who have to live in areas that these decisions impact, it would be to democratise the way that infrastructure is done. At the moment we have state planning and transport departments, with very uneven records of delivery, putting forward pet projects, sometimes in a bit of a rush, which Infrastructure Australia then has to basically just make the best of, as best it can. And when these projects hit the table, whether the projects be transport, electricity, water or telecommunications, IA has almost no visibility at all of whether there is community consent; whether there is social licence; whether there are huge mobilisations—like hundreds and hundreds of people turning up to commit to stopping the Roe Highway extension through the Beeliar wetlands—that is one example that is very close to home; I hope that part of the world is as precious to you, Senator Johnston, as it is to me.

If you were to embed—not at the IA level but upstream, at the level where state and territory authorities are working out what kinds of process to bring forward—not just some kind of brief obligation to consult at people, to tick boxes, to hold poorly advertised meetings late at night in faraway places that no-one turns up to and then take that as evidence that people do not care, but deliberative engagement with people, bottom-up planning processes where you actually go into the communities and say: 'What do we need? What kind of infrastructure is in demand here?' then you get a smarter answer. You get the wisdom of the crowd, and you get better proposals that come forward.

The second subclause here, (iib), speaks of the principles of integrated design. For the benefit of the record, I just want to go into a brief amount of detail as to what we mean by that. This was a Labor Party idea. The model I am most familiar with was brought in by Premier Mike Rann in South Australia—the introduction of an integrated design commissioner within the office of the Premier, who went precisely to these issues that I am talking about: deliberative engagement and planning, an integrated infrastructure provision to improve communities. They did extraordinary work before they were closed down and their expertise was distributed through the Public Service and some very good people moved on. I want to acknowledge Tim Horton as the integrated design commissioner in SA. This is a model that I think we would be very wise to adopt around the country. I would love to see something like this in Western Australia. If those principles are adopted, you do not get the community action groups waving placards; you get consent, you get social licence, you get better projects up. So I commend this Australian Greens amendment (7) to the chamber.