Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister representing the Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development (Senator Johnston) to a question without notice asked by Senator Rice today relating to the East West Link.

My question referred to the $1½ billion already being handed over despite information, including the business case, not remaining secret and the fact that it is a project that manifestly will not solve Melbourne's congestion problems. This was shown yesterday morning with the meltdown in Melbourne's train system that was due to antiquated signalling, showing that it is public transport that is in desperate need of investment from both the state and the federal government.

However, in response to my question the minister spoke of contributing money to infrastructure and then proceeded to spruik the benefits of the East West Link, totally ignoring the question about the desperate need for investment in public transport. How can we possibly believe the benefits the government has ascribed to the East West Link when the critical information remains secret? Despite the government having made a commitment to release information, particularly business cases, for any project where the federal government is contributing over $100 million, they have not done that in this case.

So I asked the minister whether he reconfirmed his commitment and whether he actually believed that this information, including the business case and including cost-benefit analyses, should have been publicly available before the funds were handed over, and I got no assurance at all that this shroud of secrecy would be lifted and no time line for releasing the business case, despite the fact that contracts have now been signed for the East West Link project in Victoria and despite the fact that we now have financial closure on the project. So there are absolutely no commercial-in-confidence issues that mean the business case cannot be released.

In response to noting that in the other place the minister had said he expected that Infrastructure Australia would be able to release the business case, I also noted that in our estimates hearings last week Infrastructure Australia were saying that they felt the business case would have to be released by the Victorian government. But we have no assurance that the business case is going to be released and no understanding at all as to when we are going to receive this information, despite the fact that $3 billion of our taxpayers' money is going into this project, with no transparent accountability to the community. One can only surmise that the numbers on the East West Link do not add up, or they would be on the public record. If the benefit-cost ratio was positive and robust, we would know about it. Instead, this information constantly has not been released. On the contrary, what we do know about this road is that it is massively unpopular and it is massively expensive—$18 billion for 18 kilometres of road; that is $1 million per metre. Spending this amount of money means that no money is going to be available for the substantial investments that are needed in our public transport infrastructure—for example, the substantial investments in the new high-capacity signalling that is required in order to stop the breakdowns and to stop the collapse in the whole train system that Melbourne experienced yesterday morning.

We know that the East West tollway is massively polluting. We know that it is going to result in hundreds of houses being acquired. We know that it is going to result in parkland being destroyed for this new road project. The Senate has ordered the production of documents, including the business case, three times now, and three times they have not been released. What I was trying to get out of my question to the government was when we would be able to get this business case that is so desperately needed so that the information can be on the public record and we can have transparent, accountable, evidence based decision making on these infrastructure projects, rather than dodgy decisions being made in the interests of who knows who—certainly not in the interests of the community.

Question agreed to.