Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

No, with great respect, I turned up tonight to do my job, not to make your life easy. Apologies if those two things sometimes come into conflict. Irrespective of expert advice, irrespective of the board of Infrastructure Australia and irrespective of Michael Deegan, the infrastructure coordinator, the government decided—or I should say, really, that the Prime Minister decided from opposition; he telegraphed it, no-one can say that they were surprised or they did not see it coming—that it objects to Commonwealth funding for public transport. The Prime Minister said, 'We should just look after our own knitting,' or some utterly bizarre words to that effect.

I do not understand why you would do that and it is directly relevant to this bill. The opposition has proposed sensible amendments that restore the independence of Infrastructure Australia, which you are proposing to take away. Why have you pre-emptively decided not to provide Commonwealth funding for an entire class of infrastructure?