Thinking your way to better infrastructure

In the last five years the three new government supported infrastructure and planning think tanks have been created: Infrastructure Australia, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia and Infrastructure New South Wales. During my time here, I heard that politics historically got in the way of good infrastructure policy.  The creation of these organizations was to help drive the debate and perhaps say things politicians can’t or at the very least have a hard time saying.  

InfrastructurePartnerships Australia (IPA) was created in 2005 and is jointly funded by government and the private sector firms with significant interests in infrastructure development including construction, engineer and investment banking firms. With a small team comprised primarily of researchers IPA is a key player in discussions about how to advance Australia’s infrastructure needs. IPA center right orientation has them generally driving a privatization agenda.  While Australia is known as global leader in public-private-partnerships for infrastructure (more on that in future posts), some infrastructure like much of power generation and local distribution remains in public hands. IPA played a key role in the creation of Infrastructure Australia.

Infrastructure Australia (IA) was created by an Act of Parliament in 2008.  By statute IA advises governments, investors and infrastructure owners on infrastructure planning, finance, policy, pricing and regulation. IA is responsible for helping to shape and advocate for a national strategy for the investment of Federal dollars in infrastructure, with a heavy focus on transportation infrastructure. They regularly report through their board and the Transportation Minister to the Australian Council of Governments.  IA is based in Sydney to try and keep it out of the political fray in Canberra and keep it in touch with the “real world.” At the outset IA was supposed to review projects submitted by states for Federal funding and make recommendations to the government on which projects warrant national investment. IA served as key advisor on stimulus related investments over the past few years. Something like nine out of ten projects it has ranked as top national priorities have been funded.  As one state official said to me, “IA has its supporters and its detractors, but detractors are primarily those who don’t like rigorous analysis.”  

In practice as Federal capital funding is trailing off it seems that IA is serving as an independent transportation and infrastructure policy shop that enjoys the support of Labor (center left), Liberal (center right) and Green (further left) parties. IA has wide range reports including recent work on addressing the nation’s infrastructure deficit, frameworks for national investment and energy policy. It’s a great resource for infrastructure policy geeks.

Infrastructure New South Wales (I-NSW) was created in 2011 to advise the NSW government on identifying and prioritizing infrastructure investments. The first product of I-NSW is a 20 year state infrastructure strategy.  The release of the report is as good as I’ve ever seen in terms of communications, from a flashy summary video to the technical reports.

I posted about the latest census numbers earlier and the population forecast is for the Sydney metro area to add about 800,000 residents over the next years with the goal of housing 70 percent of them in in-fill housing. The state infrastructure has a strong bent toward highway development. I have not met with I-NSW, so I’ll save my comments on the plan for a later post.