Keynote interview
L–R: Romilly Madew AO and Adrian Dwyer
Keynote interview Romilly Madew AO Key points: • •
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There is more of a political focus on infrastructure than ever before. Maintaining credibility, independence and authority at Infrastructure Australia is a ‘continual tap dance’. Infrastructure Australia needs to evolve how it assesses project business cases.
Interviewee: ► Romilly Madew AO, Chief Executive Officer, Infrastructure Australia
Interviewer: ► Adrian Dwyer, Chief Executive Officer, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia
Adrian Dwyer (AD): You came into the role at Infrastructure Australia (IA) when the Australian Infrastructure Audit was towards the point of development and publication. There’s now an opportunity for you to set the vision for what the future of Infrastructure Australia is. So, rather than just the future of infrastructure, what’s the future of Infrastructure Australia? Romilly Madew (RM): Before I start, I think it’s important to recognise a couple of people in the room. Infrastructure Australia is 11 years old, and two of its former chairs are here – Sir Rod
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Eddington and Mark Birrell. Philip Davies is also here, the former CEO, and Mike Mrdak, the secretary who oversaw the creation of Infrastructure Australia. And if you think about Infrastructure Australia, it’s been on a journey. When it was created, there was no Infrastructure Australia or equivalent globally. So, these leaders created an organisation, and developed its governance and its work plan. But infrastructure is now in the hot seat and we, as an organisation, need to evolve. There needs to be closer collaboration between the states and territories, especially in the way Infrastructure Australia works. The Audit just came out, and we had 150 contributors, but we’re now working on the Infrastructure Priority List. For this pipeline, Infrastructure Australia is working collaboratively with all of the states. In fact, one unintended consequence is that we’ve had a 40 per cent increase in the number of projects that are coming to us from jurisdictions for the pipeline because we’re working so collaboratively. We’ve kind of opened the floodgates. But I think that’s a good thing, because visibility of the pipeline is really important. We are also trying to be more pragmatic and practical in our engagement with the states and territories, and call out where there needs to be reform and further investment. AD: One of the challenges with being more collaborative and working more with the states is that, as an adviser to government, you have to balance independence and influence. Accepting that it’s a spectrum between those two, how does Infrastructure Australia best find that balance between independence and influence? RM: Currently, I’d say we’re more focused on independence. But if we’re going to build credibility, I think
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