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Robert Cook

Jun 2, 2026

10:11
You wanna kick that one off?
10:12
Sure.
10:12
Well, it starts in the boardroom itself.
10:15
You have folks like Scott and other elected governors like Scott, small, medium, and large, and some appointed governors from the industry.
10:24
They're at the table, and they're helping to bring the industry perspective right into the boardroom in terms of both decisions like the budget or rules that we need to adopt, as well as oversight and how the programs are being run on a regular basis.
10:44
And even with respect to matters that go through our adjudicatory process, they have the ability to review those and weigh in on them.
10:53
And of course, we have a terrific group of public governors who are part of that discussion as well.
Marcia AsquithMODERATOR
14:01
But you want to go back a little bit and talk about what the rationale was at the time for launching it and how we approached that.
20:29
fail if that's
20:30
the outcome.
20:31
It's a really helpful summary, I think, of it.
20:34
One of the core concerns for our members is that funding can be switched on or off at a moment's notice, which if you're in the world of infrastructure is breaking a decades-long precedent that there should be stable five-year funding settlements for infrastructure maintenance and renewals.
20:48
And I think your comparison with the sort of emergency powers and the pandemic is interesting.
20:52
So clearly the railways did run on its existing powers during the pandemic and arrangements were made, it broadly worked.
21:00
This is introducing quite significant additional powers in some of the areas to change funding.

31 MINS LATER

52:33
How can those two things ever truly enable an integrated business plan where you just don't know how to plan where your money's coming from? And that must be a real concern, right?

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