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

Minister, I am attempting to find out some detail around the intent of the bill and exactly what discussions have been had because, quite frankly, of the secrecy around it. It is not transparent in the bill as to the actual need for, in my view, the Regional Investment Corporation. Quite often we see in legislation and bills that are produced by the Deputy Prime Minister a lack of transparency and a lack of good governance in legislation that he wants to put forward.

What I'm attempting to do is to find out, through the committee stage, exactly why we need the RIC. You talk about an efficient and effective way of delivering loans, but it certainly hasn't been demonstrated that this is going to be doing that—that the bill is actually going to deliver what you say that it will deliver.