Politics, projects and people – panel discussion

L–R Max Moore-Wilton, Tony Shepherd, Martin Ferguson, Roger Massy-Greene and Brendan Lyon

Politics, projects and people

Four respected Australian infrastructure sector leaders discuss the barriers to reform and what political leaders need to do to break through these obstacles.

Chair: Panellists:

Brendan Lyon, Chief Executive, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia • The Hon Martin Ferguson AM, Non-Executive Director, Seven Group • Roger Massy-Greene, Chairman, Networks NSW • Max Moore-Wilton AC, Director, Infrastructure NSW • Tony Shepherd AO, Chairman, WestConnex Delivery Authority

Key points:

• A degree of long-term consensus and political transparency are key to resolving infrastructure challenges. • Transparency about the problem will drive better accountabilities for enabling microeconomic and fiscal reforms. • With an honest political debate, Australia can achieve substantial reforms, without waiting for a sense of ‘crisis’.

Brendan Lyon (BL): Do you think that reform is increasingly possible in this country? Perhaps starting with Max, can you each give an outlook for reform in Australia?

Max Moore-Wilton (MMW): There is a general dissatisfaction at the moment with the pace of reform, both at the federal level and, less so, at the state level. New South Wales is making very significant strides in the reform process, which shows with the number of cranes in the sky, and recent business activity; but there does need to be a sense of partnership. Infrastructure is long-term, so it needs to transcend partisan politics. There needs to be an understanding and acceptance that there are things for the general good that both sides of politics can embrace in a reasonably bipartisan way. That’s the change of mindset that is needed. Instead of owning projects for a term of government and then starting again, you need a strategy. Where governments have embraced a strategic approach, and have recognised that infrastructure is the key productivity driver, progress is made. We’re in a bit of a dip at the moment, but I’m very hopeful that we will come out of it in a constructive way.

BL: Tony, your Commission of Audit was designed to give a lot of cover, but we haven’t seen a huge amount of discussion around a lot of the aspects raised. Do you think politics has changed in this country, or do you think we’re in a dip?

Tony Shepherd (TS): I think we’re in a dip. The reform process is continuing in New South Wales, and we’re seeing the results of that reform process in a stronger rate of growth, and plenty of cranes in the sky. There’s far more to come when the $9 billion for WestConnex starts hitting the market. New Zealand embarked on a process of quite dramatic reform in some respects, but the Government brought the community with it, and was returned with an increased majority. Ditto in the United Kingdom, where the Government embarked on quite a savage

reform process in some cases, and again was returned with an increased majority. You can reform and bring the community with you, but you’ve got to work the community. You’ve got to be incredibly equitable, very open and fair. You’ve got to make sure that you look after the lower quartile – make sure that nobody disadvantaged is any worse off, and [that they are] hopefully better off. You can do it, but you really must work the community; you must have a consistent strategy. When I say consistent, [I mean] consistent in everything you say and do.

BL: Martin, you have stood up in a big way on electricity, coal seam gas and other issues. What has made you take such a strong stand?

Martin Ferguson (MF): It’s about commitment to leadership, and a desire to do the right thing in the national interest from a policy perspective. We, as a nation, have proven in the past that we can do it, throughout the Hawke, Keating and Howard periods. We’re now seeing it at a state level with Mike Baird – an outstanding leader – who is actually prepared to decide on what is needed, to argue why it’s needed, and to then deliver it. That was about leadership. The Australian community now expects the major political parties to front up to their responsibilities at a national level.

We must stop focusing on the short-term political outcomes and start to think about a productivity agenda over the next 10 to 15 years. That’s exceptionally important at the moment, because our economy is in transition. The resources boom is over in terms of investment in major capital projects. We will reap the benefits of that capital investment for many years to come – from iron ore to coal, and especially liquefied natural gas (LNG). We will be the biggest exporting nation.

A prime example of the lack of leadership at the moment is this false and dishonest debate about the Free Trade Agreement with China across all political parties – not just the trade union movement. It verges on having racial overtones, just like [the failed takeover bid of] GrainCorp; just like we’ve got in a prime region of investment at the moment, the agricultural sector and the position of the National Party. We need the Free Trade Agreement because the potential industries that will grow are the beneficiaries.

It’s almost as if the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), coming from a sector that is benefiting from Chinese investment, wants to hold the rest of the nation to ransom for their shortterm political gain. The message to Canberra has to be to fix this and fix it quickly, because we actually need the jobs and we need them now. We cannot afford to put them at risk.

BL: Max, you ran the federal public service for a period of time. What sort of impact would the political debate about the Free Trade Agreement be having, do you think?

MMW: I didn’t run the federal public service. I was happy to lead, but it’s a very capable organisation. We are very fortunate with our federal public service because it’s got a lot of intellectual horsepower, but it needs to be harnessed in a disciplined way. We’ve been losing that discipline; progressive governments have become wilful, they haven’t adopted disciplined approaches. When the traditional disciplined approaches [have been adopted], which did happen in the Hawke–Keating and Howard periods, you get good results. Governments should not marginalise their professional advisers and tell them, ‘Do as I tell you,’ rather than talk to them about the Government agenda; however, this is what’s happening. The public service would be horrified by what’s happened with the China–Australia Free Trade Agreement, because it is bipartisan. Both sides of politics desperately want a China–Australia Free Trade Agreement, and for this to come up at the last minute is really very sloppy and very messy. It’s part of the confusion about us being like the United States. We all know that every free trade agreement in the United States finally ends up in Congress, then they fiddle and fool around with it, and something finally gets through when the President is able to fast-track it. We’re not the United

States; our Parliament doesn’t occupy that role, and too many of the political players now watch The West Wing instead of actually getting down to the business of the way Australia runs. From the public service point of view, they sit there and say, ‘For God’s sake, could we turn off the television for a while?’

TS: If we’re looking at bipartisanship, the Free Trade Agreement was started by Julia Gillard. I was there in Beijing three years ago with Julia, and she signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with China. It was a Labor Party initiative. Step forward three years, and there’s a complete turnaround. That’s what I mean by policy consistency – the lack of consistency, both philosophically and economically.

BL: Roger, you were at the coalface of the electricity reform debate as the Chairman of Networks NSW. We saw a subset of this discussion around China; a fear campaign around China, within the anti-reform union campaign. What did you think of the debate around electricity reform, and particularly around the union campaign and other issues?

Roger Massy-Greene (RMG): By way of introduction, I’d like to pick up on a couple of themes that Max and Martin have introduced: leadership, and the need for a mandate for reform. Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, and Luxembourg’s most popular politician, observed, ‘We know exactly what to do, we just don’t know how to get re-elected if we do it’.

Martin mentioned the Hawke–Keating accords, and also referred to the Howard era. The Hawke–Keating accords had the support of the affected constituency, which was the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the workforce, through the unions. Howard had an electoral mandate that he sought for the GST. Those two things really define what’s necessary to get legislation through. You’ve either got to have the support of the affected constituency, or you’ve got to have the support of the electorate – and then you’ve also got to have a parliamentary majority. You’ve got to have two of those three.

Baird took electricity reform to the election and won the electorate’s grudging support. The electorate voted the Baird Government back because they liked and trusted Mike Baird, and they trusted his Government – not because they wanted electricity reform. They were willing to buy it because it was part of a package. The Baird Government also has – just – a parliamentary majority. The need for a parliamentary majority is absolutely crucial, because there have been too many governments that have effectively had a mandate for reform, but haven’t been able to get the reforms through Parliament. We should look at electoral reform in [the] upper houses in both state and federal jurisdictions in order for reform to proceed.

BL: One of the issues that you, Tony, and Martin have both been passionate about has been this discussion around coal seam gas policies and other things. Could you give us a little bit of a sense of how you think political leadership might be able to break the nexus around upstream gas?

TS: It’s a desperate situation in New South Wales, where 95 per cent of the gas is imported, but we have two great gas fields – they’re not on prime agricultural land, [but] in places like Narrabri in the scrubs. There is a campaign against [upstream gas], driven by the Greens and picked up by local residents. They get concerned, and in many cases are very misinformed. The Government weakens, and says, ‘We’ve got to be more and more and more careful’. Obviously we’ve got to be careful, and we’ve got to protect the aquifers and protect the farmers, which good companies like Santos and AGL actually do. They’ve got a great track record. If they breach [regulations], penalise them and pull them up. But here we are, sitting on a wonderful resource that could really help keep New South Wales going, and we are going to leave it in the ground because of what, I think, is grossly misinformed public opinion.

MF: I agree with Tony. We do not have a shortage of gas; we have a problem with a lack of determination at the political level to actually facilitate the production of that gas. If we’re not careful, it will lead to a tightening in the market, and consumers will pay the price for a lack of political leadership in terms of higher prices. It will also put at risk some of our manufacturing operations in Australia, which is about jobs. For both major political parties, it’s about time, because we’ve got weakness in parties in both Victoria and New South Wales. They need to decide that they want the investment and the jobs. Queensland is a prime example, where you have both major parties on board. You get huge investments – something in the order of $60 billion.

There is a revival of regional communities that were struggling, but now have long-term job opportunities because these are long-lasting investments. How could a state like New South

Above: Roger MassyGreene Right: Max MooreWilton Wales, which has to import 95 per cent of its gas, not be aggressive about selling these benefits? More importantly, organisations such as the CSIRO need to independently tell the story about this. Let’s get on with the job, like Queensland has. The sooner Narrabri and Gloucester are producing, and proving to New South Wales that [the state is] no different to Queensland, then it’s all the better from the east coast of Australia.

RMG: It’s useful to go back to look at where the coal seam gas industry has come from. Some of the early proponents of coal seam gas in New South Wales were what you would describe as colourful mining identities. They took a cowboy-like approach to the whole industry, which was, ‘We can go and do whatever we want to do; we don’t have to enlist community support for what we do’. That enabled and engendered a fair bit of community opposition. At around the same time, the Gasland movie appeared in the United States, which enabled the opponents of coal seam gas to conflate fracking and shale gas extraction with coal seam gas extraction, even though they are fundamentally different. Coal mining on the Liverpool Plains managed to get rolled into the whole package, and by the time that was rolled together, we had a completely toxic mess. Where do we go from here? Industry leadership is needed first. The problem in the beginning was that the industry was small, fragmented and incompetent. We’ve now got, as Martin mentioned, Santos, AGL and other really respected industry players [in the field]. They need to stand up and get out there.

TS: Go around Roma – the whole region around Roma. Have a look at it – it’s vibrant, it’s wealthy, and the kids have jobs there; they don’t all go back to Brisbane now to work. The community is alive. Why? Coal seam gas. Nobody’s been poisoned.

BL: Across today’s presentations, we’re going to hear about some really difficult but necessary reforms. Things like road pricing from Rod Sims, social markets in health, public services – those sorts of things. Perhaps staring with you, Max, and then you, Tony, who led the Commission of Audit, what do you think is missing in getting these sorts of reforms sparked along? Is it going to be the fiscal starvation of the states? Is it going to be the aggravation of the people? Or is it going to be something else?

MMW: The debate is certainly going to continue, because Australia faces the challenge of its infrastructure ageing, and it needs to build infrastructure for the new jobs of the future. I’m not worried about there not being a robust debate. If we need to have a crisis to show how incompetent we are before somebody will do something, that’s a rather inefficient way of doing it.

I like the way that New South Wales has tackled it; I like the way the O’Farrell Government and then the Baird Government have been consistent. They’ve

accepted a view – which has been a businesslike view that all of us had been putting to them when they were in Opposition – that infrastructure is too important to treat capriciously, sitting around and just saying, ‘This will be a good project to do,’ and then locking it in. No business does that with its capital program. A capital program in business is heavily analysed, and financing and productivity gains are analysed, as is the impact on the business in the long term. That has been missing, to a very large extent, from the infrastructure debate in Australia. Infrastructure Australia was a start. It was a bit stillborn, and I’m hopeful that it will now improve; although, I’m worried by the idea that we’ll exclude projects, and that governments will decide what they’re going to do without putting it to Infrastructure Australia.

You’ve got to have a process that is reputable and transparent, and we’re going well towards that in New South Wales. You’ve got to have a project and a public process, put it to your opposition, and then have a debate on it; for example, the cancellation of a project in Victoria was a real disaster in public policy terms. Projects shouldn’t get to that stage. At the moment, it’s a problem: governments, politicians and their staff increasingly think in billions. They ought to get back to the millions. It’s not their billions; it’s our billions. They’ve aggregated it up too far.

Many of the projects that are going to provide the most benefit to the states are not the totemic projects. They’re about cleaning up the traffic congestion and road pricing. It doesn’t take huge amounts of capital, but it takes huge amounts of political capital. You’ve got to put it in context. You need an infrastructure view that is not only about very big projects, but that is also about the public policy framework, and what is going to give you the best bang for your buck.

We need to recognise that politicians have to spread the joy, to some extent. They have to spread to the constituencies, but they can still have a sound and rational process. Business takes it from the analysis first, and then announces the project. Politics in Australia is announcing the project, and then fitting the analysis to justify the project.

It’s also, unfortunately, whatever the leader at the time says to a journalist or an editor, and that then gets locked in. They should stop talking so much, and actually do a bit more doing.

BL: I want to come back to this point around sovereign risk and transparency – but Tony, I wanted to ask you particularly: what do you think it is that will spark some of the big breakthroughs? There is good understanding of what we need to do, but it’s difficult.

TS: I really worry that, short of a big crisis, Australia finds it very hard to respond. If you go back to what Martin talked about – in the 1980s we were heading for a crisis, but the Government could see it coming and actually acted. But does Australia need to get itself in deep doo-doo before it responds?

The economy is treading water, and again, as Martin says, we are in a massive transition. It was masked by the investment in the resources sector – that’s finished. We are really in transition now. Lowerpaid white-collar jobs are disappearing by the minute. What are we going to be, what are we going to do? The economy is treading water, and terms of trade have turned against us far faster than the Commission of Audit predicted. Growth has dropped far, far below even the level that we predicted. The structural fiscal deficit is very real. It’s not going away – it’s getting bigger by the day. Do we need to get ourselves into a complete crisis, or can we get some incremental reform over time to get this economy going, and set it up for the future? That’s the issue and, again, taking Martin’s point, that requires leadership.

BL: Martin, you were the president of the ACTU during a lot of the modernisation of infrastructure markets and the economy. What was different back in the 1980s and 1990s? Was it an understanding of the need, or just leadership?

Above: Tony Shepherd

MF: I actually had a bite to eat yesterday with Simon Crean and Bill Kelty, and we talked a little about these issues. We were very fortunate as relatively young men at the time. We had a group of what were effectively men who were children of the Depression, who’d come back from World War II and never got the chance of education, but they had been through the hard times and good times. When you think back to 1983, we had an economy that was at a standstill – double-digit unemployment, double-digit inflation. There was realisation in the broader society and the union movement that something had to change. We’d come out of a period of no economic reform.

We all know that the Fraser years were disappointing from an economic perspective. We actually decided that something different had to occur, and the union movement also realised that you can actually have a bigger impact on improving ordinary people’s living standards by effectively getting reform through government. The first down payment on that was Medicare, the universal healthcare system. That was exceptionally important in terms of lower-paid people, and we built on that.

We also knew that, in return for those reforms, we had to be part of driving change in Australia, and that nothing comes without also making a contribution. I chaired the ACTU social reform committee, and I served on the root and branch reform of the whole social security system – the first time since World War II. We actually attacked middle-class welfare – the pension was not means tested. We wouldn’t think about that today. We decided to make changes to unemployment benefits and bring in the activity test. In the end, there was a reciprocal obligation on all of us in the community.

I think the Australian community is almost at a point now where it knows that something has to give. They can see, from the Budget perspective, that the days of huge revenue out of commodities and gas, have disappeared. Western Australia and Queensland are prime examples.

They want to know, for example, with an ageing society, how we will pay for our health and education in the future. They want a real tax debate in the lead-up to the next election, and this is emerging to a large extent at the moment out of Premiers Baird and Weatherill. They come from different political persuasions, but they are prepared to put their feet in the water and say, ‘Let’s have a debate about the GST’. Let’s hope this continues in the lead-up to the next election. If you go back to New South Wales, I don’t think Baird won just because of leadership, but also because he had a plan. The privatisation of electricity was a necessary reform, and consumers will benefit. It’s tough in terms of the change to the electricity system in the short term, but other states have had to do it.

Baird also went out and explained to the electorate what he was going to do with the proceeds of privatisation: invest in infrastructure and jobs, and improve productivity. The M7 is a prime example, where 55 sets of traffic lights disappeared. Since we’ve finished it, why haven’t we continued it up to the Pacific Highway through Hornsby? Think of the productivity gains for New South Wales and the whole of the east coast if there had been leadership at a Commonwealth and state level – we would have finished that over the last decade.

Such a plan will get community support. Western Sydney is gridlocked. They want leadership on tax and leadership on infrastructure; they can see the benefits for their everyday lives.

RMG: The New South Wales electricity debate actually highlights the fact that you can make reform, despite the difficult situation we’re in. If you go back to Iemma-Costa’s attempt at privatisation, they had no mandate whatsoever. In fact, before that election – I think it was 2008 – Morris Iemma had said that he wouldn’t privatise electricity, so he didn’t have the support of the electorate. He definitely didn’t have the support of the union movement. Of course, they then tried to pull it on, but he didn’t have a parliamentary majority; because Barry O’Farrell voted against them, they had none out of the three things I mentioned earlier that you need for reform. It was sort of crazy/brave.

Why was Baird able to achieve it? As Martin said, he had a plan; he was honest with the electorate about what he was going to do, and they trusted him. He put it to the vote, and he won it because he had a good plan. You can achieve reform, but it does require bravery, and it does require leadership. Andrew Constance said to me some time ago, ‘Mike and I promised each other before the 2011 election that if we got elected, we wouldn’t be there in 10 years’ time wishing we had done something. We’re either going to do it, or we’re going to go down trying’. Reform requires bravery, leadership, honesty with the people and a plan.

TS: Taking Max’s point, this is the first time in Sydney that we’ve had an integrated long-term

transport and land-use plan, and the money to pay for it. It’s probably the first time we’ve had such a plan since Bradfield.

MMW: We had an Infrastructure NSW Board meeting yesterday, to take Tony’s point, with the senior state bureaucrats and the Board members, who are businesspeople. We are all on the same page about taking the strategy forward. Now, that would have been unthinkable in New South Wales a few years ago. It didn’t take a lot of hard work; it just takes commitment to try and actually go forward.

The second point is on leadership. It’s not all about getting facts before the public. We’ve got a huge problem in process – if you have a mandate, can you deliver it? This is the point that’s coming up. People say, ‘Well, we took a mandate to the election,’ and then you’re frustrated trying to deliver it. You’re frustrated largely either through not having parliamentary majority, or, more significantly, not having majority in the upper house. My good friend, Stephen Loosley, reminded me that in the British system, they have a thing called the Salisbury Protocol, to which both sides have agreed. If you put a manifesto to the electorate and you win, the House of Lords will not frustrate you if it’s consistent with that manifesto.

I’m not suggesting that the Shooters and Fishers Party or the Palmer United Party are able to understand that, but I think it would be terribly important if the Opposition of the day understood it. Then you can get something done. The second point is that something’s going to be done about these upper house elections, Federal and state, with these huge ballot papers. The electorate just says, ‘These jokers aren’t serious’. You don’t need to take that to an election; you can change that by both of the major groupings getting together and recognising that what they’ve come up with is a mess, and that they need to go back to where they were to give the electorate a decent choice in upper houses.

Both of those reforms could be done. It doesn’t cost any money – it just takes a bit of common sense. We’re lacking in common sense in the leadership stakes at the moment.

BL: Accepting that point, I did want to ask the panel about Queensland, which doesn’t have an upper house, doesn’t have much of an economy left after the mining boom, and you’re seeing a real slowdown in that state because of the fiscal settings. The state is looking to Canberra to come in and solve its project-funding problem. What do you think about that as a philosophy, and what do you think the answers are going to be for Queensland?

TS: Personally, I don’t believe in an upper house at the state level, or even the federal, frankly. I don’t think we get any value out of it, and it just complicates the issue. Vote a government in, give them a mandate, and let them get on with the job. That would be a hell of a lot simpler than the complex arrangements we’ve got in Australia, with states and two houses of Parliament in all jurisdictions except for Queensland. New Zealand only has one house of Parliament. They get on the job; they’re capable of reform. People are well treated, the community is reasonably happy, and the country is growing.

BL: And for Queensland, what’s going to be the breakthrough?

TS: With Queensland, they’re heavily reliant on investment during resources booms. They’re very heavily reliant on coal and gas exports, and then the major issue becomes what else the economy does. They compete on a global basis in other sectors like tourism, agriculture, manufacturing and services. The challenge for their government is how to transition their economy from a resources-based economy into something else, so that they are not reliant on a single sector. That’s the big challenge, and they’re going to focus on this whole question of jobs and productivity in Queensland. They have the fundamentals there – a lot of the fundamentals are there – they’ve got a lot of resources, they’ve got a well-educated, healthy population and a great climate. They’ve got the fundamentals there. It’s just a question of getting the plan right, and getting on with the job.

BL: Martin, you spend a lot of time in Queensland in professional roles – you’ve got a lot of friends up there. What would you say about Queensland’s current situation?

MF: Campbell Newman is a prime example of how not to govern. He should have had a 10-year plan, because he had a majority to actually go through three elections unchallenged, provided he delivered on practical, pragmatic reform over a period of 10 years. Anna Bligh started it; she actually started to front up to the Budget challenges of Queensland. It was there for Campbell to do in a strategic way, Parliament by Parliament. I’m not reflecting on the current Premier, but we now have a Government that didn’t expect to be in government. When you’re in Opposition and don’t expect to be in government, continued on page 12

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continued from page 9

it’s easy to rule things in and out, because you don’t think that you’ll have to implement those decisions in the next Parliament.

The challenge for the Queensland Government is to actually make the most of a situation that confronts them with an inability, unlike New South Wales, to realise values such as the Gladstone Port or, alternatively, the privatisation of electricity. I don’t think other states should bail out New South Wales on its inability to deliver gas. Front up to your own decisions. Similarly, Queensland is entitled to what it normally should be entitled to. Why should any other state be disadvantaged by a lack of political leadership on either side of politics if states are not prepared to make their own decisions? Why should New South Wales be short-changed because it’s going to have the benefits of privatisation? If Queensland isn’t prepared to make the same tough decisions, why should South Australia now be told that it should sell the gas out of the Cooper Basin at a cheaper price to New South Wales consumers because it won’t front up to leadership on the issue of putting more gas into the market? It is a Federation, but states should not be disadvantaged by the inability of another state to make tough decisions.

BL: Just in closing the panel, I want to ask each of you to reflect a little on the issues around East West Link, potentially around Capital Metro, and also around the discussion about transparency and about the outcomes in infrastructure; what is going to start to bait the reform hooks? Are we measuring the wrong thing? Should we be reporting congestion rather than how many billions of dollars are going into transport? Should we be measuring the out-turn and starting to make it explicit to the community when things are going better or worse?

MMW: I’m in favour of bringing in a number of the externalities, because I think the emphasis has to be productivity. What’s going to lift living standards in this country is jobs and improving our productivity. Productivity growth would give us more jobs, and that’s where the debate ought to start – not with what we should build next. It’s where we’re going to get the most bang for our buck, and that requires a sensible debate on change and reform. As Martin has said, the Hawke Government was a reforming government because it recognised that something had to be done. It’s time for that to be done again, both at the state and Federal levels. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) needs to be reenergised; I think it’s just sort of drifting. It’s not going anywhere. It does communiqués. That wasn’t what COAG was about when it first started. There were a series of reforming premiers and a reforming Prime Minister who wanted to change things.

Those things need to be taken into account. You need a rich mix of reforms. Some of them are about changing the system; some of them are about replacing infrastructure; and some of them are about building new infrastructure. We’ve got to have a mix, and it’s got to be something that the public can see will be delivered. At the end of it, what comes out of the sausage machine is more jobs and a community that, over time, is going to grow in wealth and prosperity.

TS: We do need transparency. The modern community demands transparency, and when you are transparent, it’s amazing how the arguments just dissipate – they go away. The concession deed for Melbourne CityLink was tabled in Parliament, and that killed all discussion and debate about whether that was a good project or not. Complete transparency really just killed the issue stone dead.

Transparency is very important in bringing community with you. The community groups are now really well organised. They’ve always been pretty well organised, and we’ve had the ‘anti’ lobby on every project I’ve ever worked on, starting with the Sydney Harbour Tunnel. The trouble now is that social media makes it very easy to organise, and that creates a lot more noise than the group actually represents. We’ve done surveys on WestConnex, and we found that 80 per cent of the community in Western Sydney supports the project, but you wouldn’t think that if you listened to the news. You’d just think that everyone’s against it – spoiling the environment, or what have you. It’s up to the Government to provide the leadership and just keep responding openly and fairly, advise the community, and educate the community on what they’re doing. Listen to the community; we’ve changed the design of WestConnex to deal with local community concerns about parks and schools, and all that sort of thing. Genuinely, we listen. But you have to engage, you have to be transparent, and you have to be incredibly patient. At the end, once you’ve delivered the project, the community will say: ‘This works; we’re happy’. At EastLink in Melbourne, it was the end of civilisation as we know it. We were booed at the sod-turning – I was there with the Premier and the Treasurer, with people booing and throwing rocks and what have you. Complete the project, set it to

work, two years later do a survey, and 80 per cent of the people in eastern Melbourne say: ‘This is a great project, and we don’t know how we lived without it’. It’s just patience, and you have to be transparent. You’ve got to be consistent. You’ve got to be positive, and you’ve got to try and bring the community with you.

MF: Firstly, we shouldn’t lose sight of regulatory reform, because one of the barriers to investment in Australia at the moment is the increasing rate of regulation. The prime example is the need for a one-stop environmental shop. And the current court cases about Adani and the use of legal technicalities are sending a message internationally. In terms of Australia, we are not open for investment. We’ve got to front up to regulatory reform.

On investment, I think it’s about transparency. I was the one who put on the Labor Party platform, in about 1999, the idea of Labor in government at a Federal level actually creating Infrastructure Australia. I did it for transparency and to take the politics out of decision-making, because projects were selected on the basis of the electoral pendulum, not on an independent cost-benefit analysis that went to productivity, but that also can include a degree of social amenity, and can mean big and small projects. A prime example was the Bega Bypass – a huge productivity gain for industry in the southern part of the New South Wales, because everything went back to the Port of Melbourne, and stopped the need to uncouple B-doubles. This was a huge benefit to the community.

The key issue is for governments to accept that, for major investment in Australia, there will be an independent process and then accept the outcome, rather than having their fingerprints all over the decision for electoral purposes. If we do that, then the community is going to let us spend their money because it’s accountable and transparent, and they’ll get the benefits. They’ll accept it, even if that means that a particular project is not done in their area, where they will be the beneficiaries, because they know it’s being done elsewhere because there’s a bigger gain for the overall community.

BL: How much would transparency have changed the discussion around electricity in New South Wales, do you think?

RMG: I’m going to step gently outside my comfort zone, and I’m going to disqualify people who work for the regulatory arms of AGL and Origin here. Can I have a straw poll? Hands up anybody who knows the amount of their last electricity bill. So, there are a few. Hands up if you know the price of any component of that bill. How much are you charged per kilowatt hour? So, I’ve got one person, two, three, four. Hands up anybody who knows the price of the transmission of distribution component of any part of that bill.

I think I’ve made my point about transparency. Until the amount that you are charged for transmission and distribution – which is actually half of your bill – is displayed on your electricity bill, along with the name of the company that provided the services – so that you know that, for example, Endeavour Energy was responsible for half of your bill – no-one will ever understand the debate about electricity pricing in Australia, and vested interests will be able to go on disingenuously misleading the public about prices. This is just an exemplar of the lack of transparency at work in the infrastructure sector. So, bring it on.

Max mentioned Infrastructure Australia, and Martin deservedly takes credit for it, and pride in it. Oppositions love infrastructure organisations such as Infrastructure NSW, and governments hate them because they provide transparency, and transparency is what’s required. Once the public knows what’s going on, then they can support what makes sense. There’s one thing that we can all do as members of the infrastructure community, and that is to get the message to governments that they might be uncomfortable with independent infrastructure commissions, but they’ll get things done. In the long run, we’ll all be better off.

Below: IPA Chairman Adrian Kloeden with Martin Ferguson

Tony Shepherd AO Chairman, WestConnex Delivery Authority

Tony Shepherd AO was President of the Business Council of Australia from November 2011 to March 2014, and Chairman of the National Commission of Audit from 22 October 2013 to 2 May 2014.

Mr Shepherd was appointed Chairman of the WestConnex Delivery Authority in New South Wales in October 2013.

On 10 September 2014, Mr Shepherd was appointed Chairman of Macquarie Specialised Asset Management.

Mr Shepherd was Chairman of listed company Transfield Services from 2005–2013. His career with Transfield began in 1979.

Mr Shepherd’s early career was as a federal public servant, working in defence procurement and research and development, including a three-year posting to Washington DC.

Mr Shepherd oversaw the public listing of Transfield Services and the listings of Transurban and the ConnectEast Group. He was Chairman of ConnectEast.

He has a portfolio of roles and projects that includes NASA tracking stations, the Moomba to Sydney Gas Pipeline, the Anzac Warships, the Sydney Harbour Tunnel, the CityLink and EastLink tollways in Victoria, the Walsh Bay Redevelopment in Sydney, and a range of water treatment plants, power stations, roads, railways and tramways.

He is a director of Virgin Australia International Holdings, Chairman of the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust, Chairman of the AFL Greater Western Sydney Giants, Chairman of the Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association (ASTRA), and an adviser to the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.

Max Moore-Wilton AC Director, Infrastructure NSW

Max Moore-Wilton was Chairman of Sydney Airport from April 2006 until his retirement on 15 May 2015. Prior to this appointment, he was Chief Executive Officer of Sydney Airport Corporation Limited (SACL) from January 2003 to April 2006, and was Chairman of Southern Cross Airports Corporation Holdings Limited (SCACH) from January 2003. He was also the Chairman of ASX-listed Southern Cross Austereo Media Group from 2007 to 2015.

Previously, Mr Moore-Wilton was Secretary to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, a position he held from 1996 until 2003, and the former Chairman of Airports Council International.

Mr Moore-Wilton has held a number of key executive roles within the public and private sectors, and has extensive experience in the transport sector. He was appointed a Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours List in 2001.

The Hon Martin Ferguson AM Non-Executive Director, Seven Group

The Hon Martin Ferguson has a wealth of experience in the resource sector, both from a government and a private sector perspective. Mr Ferguson served as the Member for Batman from 1996 to 2013, and held a variety of Shadow Ministerial portfolios, including Resources and Energy. Upon the Rudd Government’s election in December 2007, Mr Ferguson was appointed as the Minister for Resources and Energy – a position that he held until March 2013. During Mr Ferguson’s time as Minister, he oversaw the largest investment in the oil and gas sector and the rapid expansion of the mining sector. Post-politics, Mr Ferguson holds a number of positions in the oil and gas industry, including Group Executive in Natural Resources at Seven Group Holdings, Non-Executive Director of the BG Board, and Chairman of the Appea Advisory Board. Mr Ferguson joined the CO2CRC as their Chairman in September 2014.

Mr Ferguson holds a Bachelor of Economics (Hons) from the University of Sydney.

Roger Massy-Greene Chairman, Networks NSW

Mr Massy-Greene is Chairman of Networks NSW, the joint venture entity that manages the three electricity distribution networks in New South Wales. He also chairs each of the three state-owned distribution companies: Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy and Essential Energy. He is the principal shareholder and Chairman of Eureka Capital Partners – a private investment company. Mr Massy-Greene co-founded the ASX 200 company Excel Coal Limited in 2002, and was its chairman until its acquisition by Peabody Energy in 2006. He founded and served as the Managing Director of Excel’s predecessor, Resource Finance Corporation Ltd, from 1984 until 2002. Previously, he worked for the Bank of America in project and corporate finance, and as an underground mining engineer for Rio Tinto Limited. He is a director of OneVentures Pty Ltd – a technology venture capital company. Mr Massy-Greene currently serves as the Chairman of the Salvation Army’s Sydney Advisory Board, and is Chairman of Eureka Benevolent Foundation, a family foundation focused on overcoming social disadvantage. He is the Vice President of Cranbrook School, and is a director of The Hunger Project Australia.

Brendan Lyon Chief Executive, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia

Brendan Lyon is the Chief Executive of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia.