Mr BRENDAN O'CONNOR (4:36 PM) —by leave—I thank the House. Firstly, I echo the sentiments by the Chair of the Public Works Committee and thank the secretariat for the enormous amount of work they conducted over the 12-month period referred to in the report. It is true to say that there was an enormous amount of work undertaken by the committee, as you know, Mr Deputy Speaker Jenkins—17 major projects over the period—and I was certainly involved in much of that.

Secondly, I am also very happy to report that, in relation to the training day that was held by the Defence Infrastructure Asset Development Branch, I was the representative along with the secretariat on that day, and I think it provided the opportunity for departmental officers and staff to understand their role in and obligations to the committee, pursuant to the act. I would welcome other departments that play a significant role in reporting to the committee to consider undertaking the same. It is fair to say that perhaps not all of the departments fully understand the obligations that they have in considering expenditure of public moneys. There have been occasions on which we have had to bring the provisions of the act to the attention of departments.

It is important to indicate that, above and beyond the major projects, the annual conference was held between the Public Works Committee, all state public works committees and the environment committees of state parliaments. I was in attendance at that annual conference. It really is an example of practical federalism to have those two tiers of government involved in matters of infrastructure and environment, and collaborating on important matters that affect Australia and cover both jurisdictions.

It is also important that the report notes the concerns we had about the efforts by departments to disaggregate the projects in order to come below the $6 million threshold and thereby not come under the scrutiny of the Public Works Committee. The committee quite rightly sought the involvement of the minister to ensure that there were no efforts to pull apart projects so that they would escape scrutiny. The response by the minister was effective and I am hoping that we will not have any further examples, whether they are deliberate or not, of departments looking to obviate accountability by removing the need to come to the committee. That is a very important development and I concur with the chair that that has been resolved to a large extent.

There is one matter that perhaps has not been resolved and it may be a much trickier matter. It goes to the issue of the large leases that now occur between the Commonwealth and other parties. There was a time when the Public Works Committee—one of the oldest committees of this House and the other place—oversaw the major public expenditure of the bricks and mortar projects that developed not long after Federation. However, in the last 20 or more years, much of the expenditure has gone to lease arrangements. For example, a bricks and mortar project worth $7 million could be scrutinised by the Public Works Committee, but the same scrutiny is not afforded to a $200 million lease arrangement between the Commonwealth and other parties. It is true that the Public Accounts Committee does indeed examine those matters but not in the way in which the Public Works Committee operates. I do not think that in all regards the Public Accounts Committee has the capacity to properly and vigorously examine the nature of some of those leases.

The committee, since the beginning of this term, has indicated to the minister the need to review the Public Works Committee Act 1969 to consider widening its scope to ensure that we have some capacity to look at those lease arrangements. Until now, that request has not been welcomed by the government. Indeed, it is something that this parliament and the minister responsible should consider because it is of concern to the committee that large sums of taxpayers' money may not be properly scrutinised. Other than that deficiency that is yet to be resolved, I concur entirely with the comments made by the member for Pearce and commend the 67th annual report to the House.