Sir Rod Eddington, who chairs Infrastructure Australia, wants business to work with government to keep presenting new ideas for the planning and funding of vital infrastructure around Australia.

Sir Rod used the SEQ Transport Infrastructure Forum, organised by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) Queensland, to tell the private sector that the dwindling $12.6billion Building Australia Fund (BAF) would not be enough to pay for the list of priority projects recommended to the Federal Government by his advisory board last month.

Sir Rod Eddington.

A former head of British Airways, Ansett Australia and Cathay Pacific Airways. Sir Rod warned state governments and the private sector that they may be asked to match the Federal Government funding to get projects over the line.

"Clearly the funding that we have available for the list (reduced last year from $20billion to $12.6billion due to shrinking government revenue) we put forward on March 31, won't be enough to get us to where we need to go," he said.

"I never thought it would, to be quite frank. So then there's a question of what matching funding the states can provide and what role will the government want the private sector to have in this and what subsequent funds will the Federal Government be able to commit to the Building Australia Fund."

Sir Rod agreed that the old Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model needed to be re-shaped but said there was no one model that would fit all projects. He agreed with suggestions that it might require different entities to be involved at different stages of projects with the risk shared between the public and private sectors.

He rejected other suggestions that the BAF was the "right fund at the wrong time", saying its role was to respond to private sector demands for the Federal Government to assess and deliver a pipeline of potential projects for the long term.

He said infrastructure was a not a field of dreams - "it's not a case of, if you build it they will come".

"It's a matter of really understanding and researching what the customer wants ... especially for those pieces of infrastructure which adopt the user-pays principle," said Sir Rod.

"I think it's the right focus to get the pipeline of projects in place that we can use to give people some certainty about what's coming at a time when, because of the global financial crisis, we know finances are being squeezed.

"That doesn't mean that the projects are anything other than the right projects, but it may determine the time over which they are delivered."

Sir Rod admitted that the focus of the BAF projects had shifted from nation-building to job creation due to the global financial crisis, and said the social infrastructure was more "shovel-ready" than economic infrastructure which could take at least three years to get off the ground due to planning processes.

The SEQ Transport Infrastructure Forum was part of CEDA Queensland's Transport Infrastructure Series and focussed on projects, policies and priorities for passenger and freight heavy rail, light rail, bus ways and proposed major public transport corridors for SEQ.

The forum was attended by political and business leaders, senior policy makers and international experts, including new Queensland Transport Minister Rachel Nolan, Brisbane Deputy Lord Mayor Graham Quirk, and Director-General of the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads, David Stewart.

www.ceda.com.au

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