The Critical Infrastructure Bill has already been published. The primary purpose of the Bill to allow the Government to designate certain projects or programmes as critical infrastructure. In response to this designation, all public bodies will be required to accelerate any authorisations that the projects may need.
The Bill forms a central pillar of the Government’s broader infrastructure acceleration agenda, signalling a significant shift toward fast-tracking strategically important projects deemed essential to the State’s economic and social development.
The Bill does not weaken any protections, nor will it diminish public participation in infrastructure development. Rather it allows Government, with the endorsement of this House, to identify the most critical infrastructure projects and provides public bodies with the vires to treat these projects with the urgency they need.
With regard to reforms to the judicial review process, the Accelerating Infrastructure Report and Action Plan clearly sets out why reforms are necessary.
Judicial review is an important tool that ensures that the decisions made by bodies when they are
carrying out public functions are transparent, fair, and accountable, and adhere to the principles of
legality, procedural propriety, and rationality. However, as the administrative complexity of the State
inexorably rises, the increasing application of this test to a significant number of the decisions made by public bodies has the practical impact of delaying the development of critical infrastructure. This imposes very real costs on taxpayers and society in general.
It is the duty of Government to appropriately balance these competing concerns and this is what the actions outlined in the Accelerating Infrastructure Report and Action Plan aim to achieve.
