Infrustructure Australia Needs Reform

Infrastructure Australia advises governments, industry and the community on the investments and reforms needed to deliver better infrastructure for all Australians.

We maintain the?Infrastructure Priority List?to ensure that public funds are directed towards projects that will deliver the best outcomes for our growing communities.

Our rigorous and independent analysis identifies infrastructure needs and opportunities, to ensure that our infrastructure funds are spent where they are needed most.

We also develop research and advice on the broader opportunities for infrastructure reform, and publish new and interactive data to support better infrastructure decision-making.

So says the opening page of Infrastructure Australia which is a federal government funded agency that at a cost of $15m a year is apparently providing frank and fearless advice ranking Australia’s future infrastructure priorities.

It has a glorious website and has produced a library of publications which I doubt anyone reads, certainly not the various state and commonwealth bureaucrats that advise government on priority investments nor I doubt any of the various Treasurers, Premiers and Prime Ministers who are ultimately responsible for selecting the next big thing to be built.

Anyone with the slightest understanding of how our political system works knows that infrastructure priorities are set through the competing pressures of the political system which includes community expectations, economic analysis by Treasury, the demands of rent seeking business, the whining of marginal seat back benchers and whatever the media decision is their latest priority.

For any federal government to think that any of the above would take seriously arecommendation from a QUANGO (Quasi Autonomous Non-Government Agency) is seriously ignorant on how the system works.

No doubt it was a good idea back in 2008 when Infrastructure Australia was set up to try and get some non-Treasury independent advice into the decision making process, only problem is from what they have produced over the last 14 years it looks to me as if they have drifted far from rigorous dry economic cost benefit analysis to becoming yet another wet woke influenced group of elites which believes it has to factor in the latest progressive left agenda items into their recommendations.

Even the way they write their reports reeks of a culture of Canberra elitism that is far from the concerns of the punters on struggle street.

For example Infrastructure Australia’s vision statement they claim their;

?vision for 2036 is to have infrastructure that improves the sustainability of the country’s economic, social, environmental and?governance settings, builds quality of life for all?Australians, and is resilient to shocks and emerging?stresses.

?One wonders what ‘sustainability of governance settings’ means?

Underpinning this agenda is a focus on population growth, adaptation to climate risk, building resilience, stimulating employment, driving economic productivity, embracing a diversity of places and social equity.

?What does ‘embracing a diversity of places’ mean? ??

Social Equity??Which form of social equity are they addressing? religious, class, cultural, skin, income, disability, gender, employment or all of the above??In fact why is Infrastructure Australia focused on social equity at all.

Are they proposing to recommend a road in Kings Cross with its high trans community is more or less deserving than a road in the Kimberley which has a high indigenous community?

What happened to focusing on just the economics of the cost benefit ratio while letting the political process work through the social equity trade offs.

Or do Infrastructure Australia see themselves like some progressive activist judges, as having a deeper insight into the needs of the community.

Talk about mission creep.?Infrastructure Australia’s journey from dry to wet policy advice is a classic example of elites that have become bored with their day job and have expanded their brief to take it upon themselves to solve Australia’s social and environmental problems.

I wonder if the Chair and Board are aware how out of step they have become from their original brief. Do they bother to stop and actually read their key statements. Take for instance;

The current focus on delivering infrastructure for the lowest cost must evolve into a more mature approach that considers value for money and optimum public value.

Sounds ok on first reading until you think about it for a second. I doubt that any Australian government has ever focused solely on cost alone. By definition governments have to factor in many competing requirements including both value for money and public benefit, this is nothing new.?

2.1 Recommendation: Build community resilience to all hazards by considering systemic risks, interdependencies and vulnerabilities in infrastructure planning and decision-making.

Whats this actually mean ?

5.1 Recommendation: Help households and businesses reduce electricity bills by making sure they?have?the right information and incentives.

What’s this got to do with infrastructure??This is the sort of rubbish that comes out of government campaigns when they are embarrassed by the rising cost of power as a direct result of shutting down base load coal fired power stations and building too much renewable energy.?What Infrastructure Australia should have been recommending is to put a hold on renewable investment unless it is backed up by 24/7 dispatchable power which together is cheaper than coal.

No Infrastructure Australia thinks all we need to do is provide more information and incentives to turn off the lights when the winds stops blowing and the sun goes down.

6.1 Recommendation: Secure long-term water supply for urban, rural, environmental, and cultural users by?developing a national approach to water security, including independent national?ownership.

Cultural users – what are they? When did this enter the equation, are they proposing to nationalise the Murray Darling? And what actually is independent national ownership?

This sort of dribble is writ large throughout their more recent publications.?It reeks of politically correct management speech that is designed to impress rather than inform.

Let’s move on to their recent publication Regional Strengths and Assets.

I cut to the chase and turned to the section on Western Australian Wheatbelt Region expecting to read all about our road, rail and communications challenges and our core assets of productive farmland.

But no, they barely picked up on the hint of a grain growing region which might be focused on farming, instead what I found was our assets include; Renewable Energy Infrastructure, Strategic Location being Proximity to Perth and the East West Rail line.?No doubt, all key reasons why people select Merredin to establish their business. Seriously who comes up with this stuff.

Under Natural Resources they listed that the Wheatbelt is rich in mineral resources,?gold, iron ore, gravel, lithium, copper, kaolin and limestone which contribute significantly to local economic output.?

You wonder if they did not take a hint from the name of the region.

Seriously it reads like it was researched by a grad student in Canberra who was using the encyclopedia Britannia as their reference material but they only got as far as Boddington.

But it gets better under Agriculture Assets we are told that agriculture is the largest industry with significant productions in cereal crops, fruits vegetables and livestock.?… productions in Fruits and Vegetables! ?

Or under Tourism Assets; The region’s tourism industry is characterised by its significant nature-based offerings, including coastlines and inland landscapes, including Wave Rock and Great Western Woodlands, unique biodiversity, and food and agritourism experiences.

Yes, agritourism is going gangbusters and the Great Western Woodlands caravan parks are booked out.

So now that we understand what the Wheatbelts has to offer, Infrastructure Australia goes on to list the areas needing investment.?First up they selected as No 1 Telecommunications :?– correct, no explanation needed, the mobile coverage down the length of the vermin fence that backs onto the Great Western Woodlands has almost no coverage. So a big tick here.

No 2 Water :?Goldfields Agricultural Supply Scheme:?Sure it is needing upgrading but claiming insecure water supplies will negatively impact production is a stretch unless they think it is supplying all the fruit and vegetables the Wheatbelt is growing.?

Certainly, private on farm water is an issue during droughts but this can be addressed by incentivising on farm private investment in dams, bores and desal rather than replacing a $6 billion network of 6000km of pipes. ?Obviously this level of economic analysis was way out of the league of Infrastructure Australia.

No 3 Electricity and Gas : ?Gas … there is no gas network.?Electricity is not a major problem and with the roll out of Western Powers Stand Alone Power Systems the problem does not need federal funds.

Where is the question of our roads? Our regional road network requires federal funds but roads don’t even cop a mention. By any measure a reading of their various reports highlights that they missed the mark on both assets and infrastructure gaps by a wide margin.

Who were they talking to? It wasn’t the Wheatbelt Development Commission as they have been so comprehensively strangled of funding and relevance since being rolled into the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development that all they could offer up (if even asked) is their completely out of date Blueprint and Development Strategy.?Not that the Feds would invest in something the state government has shown no interest in funding themselves.

So let’s move on to Infrastructure Australia’s latest priority list which was released last year.?In it they ?claim to have identified a comprehensive investment roadmap to support Australia’s recovery from the COVID pandemic.

Now an important body like IA that has been established to look at the big picture and address long term problems, should not be in the game of solving short term economic problems, in fact the very reason it was established was to keep this sort of political pork barrelling out of government decision making processes.

In their report they identified 44 new proposals costing $59 billion of nationally significant priorities to progress in the near, medium and long term. They proudly announce they are addressing drought, bushfires and Covid, again confusing their role by addressing short term problems which are not their remit.

So lets see what they have come up with.

Predictability at the top of the list is investing in new sources of energy with a focus on more renewables.?Again, this is madness when the existing overinvestment in renewables is killing our grid system and costing us a fortune not to mention sending base load power producers broke.

But true to their new found awareness Infrastructure Australia have a solution which is to invest in even more dispatchable energy sources to ensure the reliability of and security of our energy networks, … but at what cost ??And I note they quietly ignore the merits of more coal or nuclear.

But they do talk up enabling infrastructure for hydrogen exports.?Only problem is there is no hydrogen to export, so why focus on something that is not produced in any scale in Australia, faces massive technological barriers and is but a pipe dream of Twiggy and the WA Minister for Hydrogen.

Infrastructure Australia is also pleased they see merit in improving water security across Australia but surprise surprise they make no mention of any new mega dams – no interest in daming the Fitzroy!

When they do allow themselves to talk about a project they claim that they use a rigorous evaluation framework to access proposals, but they don’t tell you they first have to pass their pass the inner city café soy latta outrage challenge.

Personally, I would have liked them to apply the front bar of a pub test as its those people who live in the real world that suffer from the traffic jams and the high cost of power that we should be listening to.

Lets now look at the final list of projects they actually prioritised.

To start with they mostly ignored regional Australia and certainly took little notice of their own review that had identified for example the importance of water and gas in the wheatbelt.

Predictably there is the usual long list of priority Sydney Melbourne rail-road projects which take pride of place, as for Western Australia we too are deserving of more road and rail investment including the Armadale Road Bridge, Bindoon Bypass, and MetroNet with two regional projects getting the nod being the Myalup Wellington Water Project and the Bunbury Outer Ring Road.

Note that not one of their own Wheatbelt priorities of water, telecommunication, electricity and gas got a mention (Tier 3 was no where to be seen, nor tier 2 or 1) nor did the more obvious projects like the state Governments important Outer Harbour or anything that will help keep the billions of dollars of mineral projects flowing in the north of the state.?

As to how the Myalup-Wellington Water Project stacks up is beyond me.?What are they expecting to grow in the Harvey district, hemp? ?the lack of labour and limited market seriously impacts the potential of horticulture in WA, just as growing fodder crops using irrigated water for dairy does not stack up. It looks to me as if their rigorous economic analysis is not that rigorous after all.

At best the hundreds of millions proposed to be invested in the Myalup-Wellington proposal which includes desal would be to provide more potable water for Water Corp, but a far better investment would be the huge untapped potential of recycling of Perth’s waste water which does not even get a mention.

As for the billion dollar, Outer Ring Road in Bunbury, it defies common sense as all it will do is save the Dunsborough weekender set half an hour on long weekends.

I doubt such a project would stack up against doubling the number of mobile towers across all of regional Western Australia (250) which at a quarter of the cost I suspect would generate far better returns.?

But then without a rigorous economic cost benefit analysis minus all the arbitrary social equity and governance measurements we will never know.

?

?