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

I am very happy if Infrastructure Australia make all the information, in all of its fine details and all of its granularity, available on the website. At every estimates session that I have attended since I have been in the Senate, I have taken the opportunity to question Infrastructure Australia about things such as their cost-benefit-analysis methodology and the other ways that they are making judgements. The critical thing is that requiring this detail of granularity in the annual report in the legislation means it has to be there. We know that there is no statutory authority to present this information on their website. We know that public servants at Infrastructure Australia do a very good job of only giving just the right amount of information that they want to give at estimates, of not knowing things, of having to take things on notice, of not giving the answers to those questions on notice until the day before the next estimates session and of not giving the detail needed in the answers to those questions on notice. Hence, the cycle goes on: you ask more questions at estimates, and then three months later you get another tiny sliver of information. Hence, there is the requirement, in the interests of transparency and accountability, that the annual report have the full level of detail so that the community can share that information. It is so we can make our own assessments and the transport experts around the Australian community can make well-informed assessments about the cost-benefit analyses and the appropriateness of investing in various different bits of infrastructure.

Question agreed to.

Bill, as amended, agreed to.

Bill reported with amendment s ; report adopted.