Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Not a minister—all right, thank you for the correction. We have had some ministers; all up we have had four senators from the government handling this bill. It is one of the most critical bills, I would argue, for the future of this country and yet we have no consistency here at all. And, in my view, we have a lack of understanding of the real import of what this bill will mean, particularly in terms of, as we have said before, greenhouse gas and oil implications.

Anyway, I do not think there is much to be gained by continuing to debate this. But I find it very disappointing that the opportunity to get real scrutiny of infrastructure projects—the opportunity to actually give the public input; the opportunity for this parliament to see whether, indeed, greenhouse gas and oil depletion alternatives were even considered—is not going to be taken on board. We are going to go back to what will be backroom arrangements, where recommendations are made—recommendations for public-private partnerships—and the community is not going to have an opportunity to be able to unpick those.

I regret the fact that the government is not going to support the amendment, but I would hope that the opposition will. Given that they wanted parliamentary scrutiny of the ministerial directions for Infrastructure Australia, I am sure they would want the parliamentary oversight of recommendations where more than $50 million is to be spent.

Question put:

That the amendment (Senator Milne’s) be agreed to.