Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

We won't be supporting the broad range of amendments today; I know you have talked to one in particular. There are a couple of things that I would like to say about that.

The Commonwealth state and territory governments already analyse the costs of materials and labour required to build infrastructure projects, and this analysis informs project cost estimates. So, consistent with the government's response to the independent review of Infrastructure Australia, the government expects IA to take a much more active role in the post-completion stage of projects. It hasn't done that to date, so the fact that we have put that in the bill is a really significant change to the way in which Infrastructure Australia operates now, including the collecting of data.

The government is considering ways of making more data regarding infrastructure investments public, but that is not a matter for the IA Act; that is a matter we're discussing in the context of the next national partnership agreements. One of the things we have certainly learnt from the review that we're undertaking at the moment is that the timeliness of data that we receive from states and territories about where projects are up to needs to be improved substantially, and the way in which we report on where projects are is pretty significant.

In terms of the publishing, whilst there is no requirement, they do publish the priority list, and I would imagine that would continue. What I am concerned about is that really what we're trying to do here is make sure that Infrastructure Australia remains an adviser to government for government decision-making processes, so not all of that information will be able to be made publicly available. Certainly we'll endeavour to make sure we make as much available as we can, but when it is a decision for government, and it's a cabinet decision, these are not the sorts of things we're intending to support, so we won't be supporting those amendments today.

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