Chairman’s Foreword | Adrian Kloeden, Chairman Infrastructure Partnerships Australia

Foreword

I am delighted to present the latest edition of Future Building – the journal of Australia’s infrastructure sector – which presents the proceedings from the annual Partnerships infrastructure policy symposium.

This year’s proceedings reflect the ‘two speed’ infrastructure market, with palpable optimism about New South Wales and Victoria, but a gloomy outlook for the other states facing leveraged public budgets and the evaporation of mining investment.

This year’s programme saw a focus on short-, medium- and longer-term reforms to increase the quantum and the quality of infrastructure investment.

Immediate budget and project funding reform priorities formed a focus across many presentations – noting the wide availability of finance, but the lack of well-structured cash flows to repay finance over time.

Many speakers also considered how immediate solutions can be considered within a wider context of long-term structural reforms to government budgets, and to the structure of infrastructure markets themselves.

Our 2015 conference saw delegates and speakers drawn from a wide cross-section of community, government and business sector stakeholders.

Many of the reforms that Australia will need to drive permanent infrastructure solutions – such as privatisation of public assets, pricing reforms and others – will only be possible through an informed public debate, and support from unlikely quarters.

Partnerships is an important forum to resolve the way ahead – and to deepen and widen the national infrastructure policy reform partnership toward material progress.

I hope that you find this edition of Future Building of interest, and I welcome any feedback you may have.

Adrian Kloeden

Chairman, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia