Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

I can advise the House that, broadly, with one or two issues that we wish to identify, the opposition is in support of these changes to standing committees, and we have certainly been working with the government and with the crossbench on these changes, and one of the consequences of them is to provide some greater roles for the crossbench in the committee process. I do want to note two specific issues, one of which is that there is no longer to be any reference to 'cities' in the title of the standing committee on infrastructure, so 'cities' has disappeared from the title of this committee and, indeed, from the minister's title. It does raise the question of the level of commitment of this government to the cities agenda. Our government had a very strong agenda when it came to cities, but we seem to be moving away from a commitment to cities policy. So I do note that we no longer have a minister for cities. We no longer seem to have a committee that has any investigation in relation to cities. The opposition does note that with concern.

What we also note with concern is that two committees have been abolished, and one of those is the Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia. That is pretty significant. Our government had a very strong commitment to northern Australia, and this government has failed to re-establish the Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia. That is a matter of concern to the Liberal Party and to the National Party, and I believe that the Leader of the Nationals wishes to speak about that.

See this speech in context