Senator IAN MACDONALD (6:41 PM) —The Auditor-General has conducted a performance audit of Infrastructure Australia, particularly the conduct of Infrastructure Australia in the first national infrastructure audit and development of the infrastructure priority list. As the Auditor-General points out, the purpose of Infrastructure Australia is to assess major infrastructure projects that are being talked about or suggested within our nation. Quite clearly, it is the role of Infrastructure Australia to carefully assess Australia’s infrastructure needs and then to prioritise them into what might appropriately be a subject for further government investigation and eventually investment of public monies.

Regrettably, and this is noted by the Auditor-General, a number of projects that are being developed in Australia at the moment constitute election promises from the 2007 and 2010 elections, which will not be going to Infrastructure Australia. They are projects hatched in the back rooms of the Labor Party somewhere around Australia, and they come forward without a great deal of assessment or figuring or cost-benefit analysis. They are simply thrust upon the Australian public as something the public will have to pay for, even though the work Infrastructure Australia is supposed to do with all major infrastructure projects has not been done.

Perhaps the most significant infrastructure project in Australia in recent times is a proposal to spend $43 billion not of Senator Conroy’s money, not of Ms Gillard’s money, but of Australian taxpayers’ money. Forty-three billion dollars is a huge spend in anyone’s language. It even makes the money wasted on the pink batts scheme pale into insignificance. It even makes the $16 billion wasted—much of it wasted—on the Julia Gillard memorial school halls program pale into insignificance.

Senator McLucas —We’re not going to talk about the Bruce Highway, are we?