2018 CCF Victorian Infrastructure Outlook Report 1 | Page 8

2018 Victoria Infrastructure Report
A. Developing a Long Term Infrastructure Program
Recommendation 1: Commonwealth and Victorian
Governments should plan to sustain a rolling infrastructure
investment program that provides industry confidence
and certainty. This should focus on projects with proven
productivity benefits.
Recommendation 2: The Commonwealth and State
Government should engage with industry to develop
clear and comprehensive longer term (15 to 20 year)
infrastructure plans.
Recommendation 3: Both short term and long term
public investment programs should be based on
maximising economic benefits through transparent cost
benefit analysis (CBA).
B. Funding Productive Infrastructure
Recommendation 4: Given low interest rates and
relatively low government debt at the Commonwealth
level, further debt funding of productive infrastructure
should be used as an effective means to address the
infrastructure deficit.
Recommendation 5: Furthermore, the Commonwealth
Government should guarantee the debt of any expanded
infrastructure program by the Victorian Government to
a defined maximum figure so long as those projects are
shown to be productive through the transparent CBA
process.
Recommendation 6: The Commonwealth Government
should provide 5 yearly pooled infrastructure funding
to Victoria and reduce the use of project specific or tied
(conditional) s96 grants.
Recommendation 9: The Victorian Government should
further develop policies for encouraging and assessing
unsolicited infrastructure investment proposals from the
private sector.
C. Boosting efficiency and reducing costs
Recommendation 10: To maximise efficiencies in
public infrastructure provision and reduce costs, both
the Commonwealth and Victorian Government should
follow through with reforms to the public infrastructure
procurement process, as outlined by the Productivity
Commission’s review in 2014.
Recommendation 11: Procurement policies and
approaches should be harmonised across all levels of
government within jurisdictions – and, where possible,
across jurisdictions – including the use of open (rather
than closed) tenders, local content rules, and de-bundling
large infrastructure projects to boost competition and the
sustainability of the civil construction industry.
Recommendation 12: Commonwealth and Victorian
Governments should look to increase funding for
infrastructure maintenance as a more cost effective way
of sustaining the existing asset stock and reducing future
requirements for costly asset replacement.
Recommendation 13: Commonwealth and Victorian
Governments should continue to make concerted efforts
to eliminate structural deficits in their Budgets. This would
be assisted, in turn, by improvements in the quality of
Budget reporting to better isolate capital and recurrent
expenditure items and the degree to which each are
effectively funded through debt.
Recommendation 7: Given relatively successful lease
outcomes, Victoria should consider other long term
asset leases to fund infrastructure investment – but
only after rigorous analysis to demonstrate that the
benefits outweigh the costs and that effective regulatory
processes are in place.
Recommendation 8: The Commonwealth Government
should reactivate its 15% Asset Recycling Initiative to
encourage Victoria to fund new productive infrastructure
and which compensates for the loss of the future income
stream of publicly held assets.
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Source: Summit Concrete Constructions
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