Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

We withdraw that proposed amendment in favour of government amendment (3).

The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN: We will now consider opposition amendment (14) on sheet 7463.

by leave—I move opposition amendment (14) on sheet 7463:

(14) Schedule 1, item 9, page 7 (line 19) to page 8 (line 3), omit the item, substitute:

9 Subsection 6(4)

  Repeal the subsection, substitute:

(4) However, the Minister must not give directions about the content of any audit, list, evaluation, plan or advice to be provided by Infrastructure Australia.

We believe our amendment is better worded and we note the government has agreed to withdraw this change. We prefer our resulting wording as being more comprehensive that the government's, so we prefer our amendment. It retains the existing general power of the minister to direct IA in its functions, but subject now to relating to content of its output. This is a narrower power that restricts the minister's input to not affecting outputs. The proposal is to retain the existing power. This amendment preserves the independence of IA. Without it, IA ceases to be independent at all. So we consider this to be a very fundamental position.