Peter Harris AO Productivity Commission (PC) Chairman Peter Harris AO reflects on the PC’s recently released Inquiry Report into Public Infrastructure, with a particular focus on the negative impacts that can accrue when governments announce projects before proper analysis is undertaken.
Key points: • Political government should resist the temptation to announce infrastructure projects in advance of sound analysis. • Infrastructure funding is ultimately sourced only from taxpayers, or from infrastructure users through user charges. • Transport funding and congestion challenges, together with technological improvements, mean that reformed road user charging is inevitable. • Skills remain a challenge for infrastructure, and must remain a policy focus.
Last year, the newly elected Abbott Government, as well as the state governments, with strong support from industry groups, were talking up the prospects of infrastructure investment replacing mining and liquefied natural gas (LNG) capital investment programmes, as these areas slowed cyclically. Over the last 12 months, governments have generally attempted to live up to this image, which is very positive; however, the lessons that we have learnt in the past decade suggest that we should not 28
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Volume 5 Number 1
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