Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

Labor supports this amendment. This amendment was legislated, as Senator Rice has mentioned, as part of the package of amendments to the Infrastructure Australia Act that passed the parliament in 2014. In a welcome show of bipartisanship, the Senate amendments, mainly authored by Labor but with input from the Greens and crossbench, were accepted by the government. This amendment was sought to require that Infrastructure Australia publish annually all methods it uses to evaluate cost-benefit analyses. This is an important element of transparency and allows those who wonder about how projects are evaluated to have an insight into how recommendations are arrived at. Following the passage of the Infrastructure Australia Bill in its amended form, this new clause was omitted in the process of general amendments to many acts to incorporate governance changes under the Public Governance Performance and Accountability Act 2013. This amendment merely restores the status quo. Labor notes that Infrastructure Australia has, notwithstanding the absence of this clause in its act, proceeded to publish recently its new assessment framework guidance. This followed a review last year and contains detailed technical advice on how to work up a business case, including a cost-benefit analysis.