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

Senator Macdonald, that is a useful interjection. Ms Gillard and Prime Minister Rudd introduced Infrastructure Australia to prevent you and your colleagues, through you, Chair—

Honourable senators interjecting—

The CHAIRMAN: Order! I would ask senators not to interject and I would ask you, Senator Ludlam, to address your remarks through me.

People have been asking Senator Macdonald not to interject for hundreds of years!

The CHAIRMAN: Yes, I have drawn his attention to that too. You have the call, Senator Ludlam.

Best of luck with that! That, effectively, Infrastructure Australia place some of these investment decisions at arm's length from politics. We are now seeing, effectively, the reversal of that policy—an attempt to gut Infrastructure Australia's independence that was rebuffed, amended and returned to the House of Representatives by this place in a quite collaborative way. I strongly support these amendments. We will not be supporting the LDP amendments because, effectively, it takes the teeth out of the transparency. It is not good enough to come in here and just put a document on the table, because people talk all sorts of rubbish about benefit-cost ratios and so on. These amendments need teeth. So we will be opposing the LDP amendments. We will be supporting the opposition amendments so that this parliament does get the final say on investment decisions of this scope.