Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The particular provisions that Senator Moore was referring to are included in the draft investment mandate that the government has released. I will clarify that the provisions Senator Moore was reading out are not a definition of 'benefit' per se; it is a fleshing out of what we expect to be included at least in the assessment of public benefit. The relevant provision is provision 2 in schedule 1 of the investment mandate. That schedule is very simply that the proposed project will be of public benefit, and the description of that, to flesh it out, is that, in considering the public benefit, the board will give preference to the projects that serve multiple users and produce benefits to the broader economy and community. So it is in considering the public benefit that those two considerations are taken into account. It is particularly there to try to provide some definition for the board about what is economic infrastructure, because there is not a steadfast rule here. We have landed on this particular definition that they should give preference to projects that have those two characteristics, but those are not the only elements that may be considered when assessing public benefit.