Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I was very pleased to work on this suggestion, which came out of the economic roundtable, with the Treasurer, along with a number of other ministers. The Treasurer—in the process of establishing the Treasury's Front Door, which he has previously committed to and which is all about trying to better coordinate within government the way that government responds to different investment proposals—has said that we also intend to consult on the possibility of a Commonwealth coordinator-general, whose role would be not to issue approvals for projects but to better coordinate the various different approvals required within government. Typically, for example, if you had a major foreign investor who wanted to make an investment in Australia, they might require approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board, or they might require approval through the department that I now oversee. It's about better coordination of those approvals. (Time expired)