Towards social markets – panel discussion

Towards social markets

As governments move from directly delivering services to procuring them in a competitive market, traditional public-private partnership models are evolving

Chair: Panellists:

Graham Brooke, Lead Partner – New South Wales Government, KPMG • Ben Dempsey, Project Director, Department of Justice and Regulation (Victoria) • Leilani Frew, Executive Director, Head of Infrastructure and Structured Finance, NSW Treasury • Tracy Howe, Chief Executive, NSW Council of Social Service (NCOSS) • Rob Koczkar, Chief Executive, Social Ventures Australia

Key points:

• The public sector’s role will inexorably shift from a direct monopoly provider of community and public services, in favour of its new role as a purchaser and regulator of these services, on behalf of the community. • This shift will be led by the ‘push’ from unsustainable recurrent budget costs, but it must be about seeking value for money and outcomes, not simply cost. • Projects like the Northern Beaches Hospital PPP and the Ravenhall Prison evidence early pathfi nders of this increasing shift. • The community and welfare sectors will partner on complex reform – provided it is based on solid policy and clear benefi t.

L–R: Ben Dempsey, Leilani Frew, Tracy Howe, Rob Koczkar, Graham Brooke

Graham Brooke (GB): We are seeing a fairly radical shift in the role of government around Australia and around the world. The role is moving from government being a direct provider of social and other services, to it being a very informed purchaser or commissioner of different types of services in a contestable marketplace.

From the infrastructure perspective, this has two implications. Firstly, it means that the traditional public-private partnership structures are definitely evolving, and are becoming more service-driven and outcomes-focused. Secondly, it’s releasing, through efficiencies, lots of money from the recurring revenue budgets of government into the capital programme for more assets to be built in traditional and new PPP methods.

Starting with you, Ben, the Ravenhall Prison Project is a really good example of the new breed of social infrastructure PPPs that are appearing in the marketplace. Can you give us some background to that project, and some of the issues and benefits associated with this new structure?

Ben Dempsey (BD): I should point out that I am not a correctional expert; I work in infrastructure development. The Ravenhall Prison Project is a 1000bed, medium-security men’s prison to be constructed in Melbourne’s west. It actually does represent a significant change compared to other recent socialsector PPPs, such as other prisons and hospitals. The difference lies in the nature of the PPP itself, and, in that regard, most other prisons and hospital projects really have been around design, build, finance and maintain, so there’s a real focus on the asset.

With Ravenhall, the focus is entirely on service delivery. It’s a full-service prison. It’s the first fully privatised prison in Victoria in about 17 years, and its focus is on achieving correctional and reintegration outcomes. Sure, we’ve got to build the prison to accommodate prisoners, and that’s part of the reason. We’ve got a capacity problem in Victoria, and this will address that. But it’s really about providing services over the long term. In terms of the benefits of that approach, having an operational philosophy or model at the heart of the project really has been instrumental in the development of all other components: the design, the whole-of-life plan, the infrastructure, the service delivery and so on. That really provides a range of innovation and efficiencies, and that’s what we’re seeing – whether it’s through new IT-based prisoner management and information systems, or rostering approaches over the term.

We’re trying to address the significant mental health needs of prisoners, firstly; and secondly, we’re trying to address or drive down the rate of recidivism, or the rate of reoffending, and one of the ways we are going about that is by using a payment-by-results approach. It’s also being trialled in other projects – prison projects in other jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom. This is where the project company or the operator really has some skin in the game, and is financially motivated

Above: Northern Beaches Hospital

and incentivised to drive down the rate of reoffending, which is measured over 10 years by the police.

We’re not only measuring the rate of reoffending; we’re also measuring other key factors that the research has shown really make an impact on people reoffending, such as having stable employment and stable housing, reconnecting to the community, being given continued support going forward, and being involved in other offender-based programmes.

This intensive support at Ravenhall is being provided both pre-release (while they are in prison), and once they are released. Obviously, once they are released, it’s voluntary, so the project company really has to work out how to incentivise ex-prisoners to remain involved in these programmes, and to make sure that they have appropriate housing and employment opportunities.

It’s quite a shift, and in previous projects there was an almost fractured approach, wherein you had the corrective services – a bunch of not-for-profits, independently, most of the time – trying to provide services. With this approach, everyone’s in there together, trying to provide these outcomes. What it is really about is trying to provide a safer community.

The market took some time to fully get its head around this new approach – what we call the operator-focused approach. It will eventually need some sort of change in traditional PPP structuring arrangements. This means you need to have an operator in there, and the operator potentially needs to provide equity in the long term – so that might be a bit of a change, or a challenge. The other thing is long-term flexibility, obviously. It’s a 25-year contract, and to get everything aligned in the first instance is going to be pretty hard, particularly around support programmes. It’s also difficult for the market to comprehend the nature or the exact scope of the support programmes, in terms of volume and throughput, and how they price it and deliver it.

With some of the financiers – equity and debt – they have a good understanding now of construction and delivery risks, but will possibly still be anxious and nervous about getting involved in projects with corrective services, mental health services and reintegration services; but I think they will get there. This also represents a challenge for governments in terms of trying to cost all of this, and then working out what kind of assessment tools they can use to actually measure value for money.

In a nutshell, it’s a new style of PPP. In fact, to use an acronym, it’s almost a PPNP, because you have the public sector in there, you’ve got the private sector there, and you’ve got the not-for-profit sector too. At one end of the contract, you’ve got the state, and at the other end, you’ve got the project company, and they’ve got subcontractors, including a state entity, Forensicare, providing mental health services. There is also a range of alliance partners providing reintegration services and support, including Melbourne City Mission, The Gathering Place and YMCA. It’s a fairly new approach, and it’s about getting long-term benefits. There is no doubt that the cost of reoffending in our community, and incarceration, far outweighs the cost of providing these services.

GB: Leilani, New South Wales is also at the front of these new developments, with the Northern Beaches Hospital and Grafton Prison, and also the Social Benefit Bonds trial. From a central agency perspective, how do you see these models providing benefits to the state, and what does all of this mean from a budgetary and fiscal perspective?

Leilani Frew (LF): The challenges for all of us are the ageing population, the growth of population and the real demand for quality services. The models have enabled us, as government, to be more sophisticated in articulating what the role of government is, and what the Government is in the business for.

Our business is to provide services to our constituents, whether it be Victoria or New South Wales or New Zealand, and I’m picking those three jurisdictions particularly, because I think, collectively, we have been at the forefront of being sophisticated in the way that we articulate our role.

Therefore, we are about outcomes – not just building a piece of infrastructure and delivering it well, but what that infrastructure actually delivers in terms of services, and the outcomes for our constituents.

Infrastructure is a means to an end, but the end is actually bigger and broader than the infrastructure delivery by itself. When we come back to the very boring part of it – the fiscal and the budgetary element – this is around the Government’s huge responsibility for taxpayer dollars, and making sure that we use those dollars efficiently, and effectively deliver outcomes.

These models enable value for money and enable transparency. We want value; we don’t want cheapest cost. In terms of talking about the prices of services, a lot of people focus on infrastructure: the cost of infrastructure, and how much debt and finance can go into capital expenditure. In the social space particularly, what is really interesting is that infrastructure is a minutia, in terms of the overall cost of the outcomes that we’re trying to procure. The Northern Beaches Hospital in itself is a few hundred million dollars, compared to the few billion dollars for the cost to deliver the health services that we’re actually asking from that piece of infrastructure. From a fiscal and budgetary point of view, how do we make our taxpayer dollars sustainable so we can actually get more bang for buck – or, in a financier’s term, return on investment – where that investment is actually into outcomes, and not into infrastructure itself?

The models enable recognition of the twoway conversation (state, and design and construct contractor) that we need to have, and now also the three-way conversation (state, design and construct contractor, and operator). The three-way conversation that we need to have in order to deliver outcomes enables clarity about the roles that each of us play to deliver those outcomes. It helps unlock market participation. We find, particularly in the operator sector, and particularly in the social space, that we have very few people who are prepared to finance and back these projects. We need to help unlock that capacity to deliver the outcomes that we’re looking for. More importantly, it’s around diversity in service delivery and outcomes. I’m not advocating that the public sector needs to deliver, or that private sectors need to deliver – from a diversity perspective, it’s about getting efficient dollars. We all talk about diversity generally in our organisations, and what that brings to the table. From a service outcome delivery perspective, and from a fiscal perspective, what diversity brings to the table is competition, and it challenges the cost of us providing the services and the outcomes.

From a fiscal budget point of view, it’s around transparency, bang for your buck, return on investment, better measurement and enabling us to sit there and say, ‘Your dollars, dear taxpayer, have been put to work to deliver these great outcomes’.

GB: There is an issue around the thinness of the marketplace. On traditional PPPs, there is absolutely no issue, but on all of the new-generation PPPs in social infrastructure, there is a thinness in elements of the full service provision. Is the market keeping pace with the growth in this marketplace?

LF: We need to continue to have the two-way conversations. Northern Beaches Hospital, for example, was a conversation when the market wasn’t quite prepared to take up the challenge that we, as government, put to them, in terms of risk around the clinical services. We had to refine the way that we did that. It’s captured in the PPP nomenclature, but it’s not really a PPP – it’s a construction contract with a services contract stapled to the hospital, but still driven towards an outcome. We will continue to evolve, and that’s the great thing about this market – that we do evolve as we start to really understand the role that each of us can play.

GB: The NSW Council of Social Service (NCOSS) has a key role to play in the development of these outcomes-based social markets, and that was evidenced by the memorandum of understanding (MOU) that you signed with Infrastructure Partnerships Australia (IPA) and the New South Wales Government in relation to social housing. From a sector perspective, what do you see as the key benefits to the important people in all of this: the end users and the recipients? What is the benefit to those people from this type of partnership? What do we need to do to expand the opportunities for NGOs and others in this sector?

Tracy Howe (TH): I’ve been in this role for a year now. A year ago, when I first came to one of these kinds of things, I felt like I was the only hippie in the room, but I’m feeling less and less so. I feel more and more like I actually belong here, and I have a space here for my constituents. When I talk to Leilani, I know that she speaks my language, and she’s sitting here, talking about the things that interest my membership. I really like this adding the ‘N’; we should start making that the acronym, because that is the bit that is missing in this discussion. And you know what? It’s a powerful and hefty sector.

There are 600,000 not-for-profits in Australia. The latest figures we have show that the sector’s contribution to GDP is $43 billion. We’re not just a bunch of nice people doing Meals on Wheels. The latest figures we have show that the income of the sector was $76.6 billion in 2006–07, remembering that 49.6 per cent of that was self-generated by the sector. They’re smart, they know how to create dollars, and they know how to do this work. So, they’re smart, they’re trusted and they’ve done all of this by using their own ingenuity. You need to be in there seeking them out and creating partnerships, so we can have social benefit bonds like Newpin, so we can have the social housing fund. The sky is the limit at the moment, and that is the message that I want to bring to you today: it’s low-hanging fruit – everyone is just ready for it.

Addressing the question that you ask about the fund, and what the fund does to the end user; the constituents I represent are the people in the street that actually need housing, and we have a government that is open to talking. They talk about social infrastructure. They talk about people as people. They actually enter into the conversation. What this $1 billion fund says to me is that there is a real landscape from which that $1 billion should not be $1 billion; this should be the beginning of the long-term conversation that is billions and billions and billions of dollars. That means housing with wraparound services, because Leilani made a good point. She’s saying that when you look at the hospital, it’s not just bricks and mortar. It’s about all the other stuff that is part of our community.

This is the time, certainly in New South Wales, for the Government, the private sector and the not-forprofit sector to say: ‘Look, put our prejudices aside, look for the sweet spot, and we will go ahead and we will make the best of this opportunity’. This is good for people. We are going to have thousands of new houses, probably early next year. This is amazing. We wouldn’t have gotten this deal, and I am sure of this, if NCOSS and IPA hadn’t walked in as unlikely partners and had that commitment, and also taken the whacks across the head for having the audacity to do it.

It’s about time people started to go, stuff your ideology, stuff all of that, it’s about what we can deliver to the people. That’s why these kinds of relationships have to keep being nurtured. The sector is ready for it. It’s a very skilled sector, but it’s also a sector that’s waiting for the encouragement from you guys. We need to find the common language. You need to get to know this market. Start to invest in your community. Social benefit bonds generate pretty good dividends, right? Newpin delivered an 8.9 per cent return. That’s good! I know things are pretty grim in my bank account, but this is a place where you can generate money and you can see outcomes in your community.

GB: We’re moving on to the investment side of things right now. Rob, you’ve been very heavily involved with some of these recent initiatives, including social benefit bonds, and the success does depend on the investor base. From your perspective, what do you see as the issues and the way forward in terms of this kind of social market?

Rob Koczkar (RK): Social Ventures Australia (SVA) is a charity. We exist on the good graces of the donations we get. In many ways, the conversation is about the outcomes that we want to drive from the money that we spend on social service provision in Australia. Some work that the Centre for Social Impact and PwC have done estimates the total annual spend on social services, broadly defined as health, education, social infrastructure, and spending

on housing, at $420 billion. When asked for the best estimate of how much of that money is spent with outcomes articulated and contracted as the delivery mechanism, people sort of stretched up and said, ‘I reckon, at most, top estimate, one per cent’. There is actually only one contract that people can talk about, apart from the Newpin contract – the old Job Services Network contract, which was an outcomesdriven one. $420 billion is a lot of money, which gets spent on the basis of the activities provided, rather than the outcomes we want delivered. That, in a sense, was the birth of the PPP idea in infrastructure 20 or 25 years ago, where the outcome was clear: we wanted an airport, and we wanted a toll road. You could easily define the outcome, you could easily measure success, and you could write a contract down that didn’t have a whole lot of unintended consequences, or ones that you couldn’t manage. Those are the pieces of capability that we need to develop as a group of investors, governments and commissioners of these services. We still need to be able to look at a social outcome that we want to generate. I’ll go back to Ravenhall, where we say that what we ultimately want to do is to reduce the prison population and the rate of offending in Victoria.

One of the unfortunate truths is that a predictor of subsequent offences is that you’ve committed offences before, so the reduction of recidivism is an important lever. But if you’re designing that contract just to reduce recidivism rates in Victoria, one way that you can do it is to get all the released prisoners and bus them up to the border, and start housing them in New South Wales. We need to think about the outcome that we want to generate, how success will be measured, and how the contracts can be written in a way that won’t produce a whole lot of unintended consequences. These outcomes that we’re talking about are more subtle and more complicated than just building infrastructure. As we think about the marrying of the social service itself, and infrastructure components, this is where the real opportunity is – both to deploy significant amounts of money, and to generate significant positive benefits.

What we see at the moment is the social impact bond trials that are going on, and I would add my applause to what’s been done in New South Wales, but it’s also now being picked up in New Zealand, South Australia, Western Australia, Victoria, Queensland and federally. This is around taking the service component and thinking about how we can do a PPP just on a service basis, but it’s when we combine the service and the infrastructure piece. One I would point to is Foyer, a youth homelessness model, where you build what feels like student accommodation next to a TAFE, and you populate it with roughly 60 per cent fee-paying, ordinary students, and roughly 40 per cent young people who are at risk or have been homeless. These young people are enrolled into the TAFE courses and given a bunch of wraparound services to build their work skills and employability skills. After a couple of years, they’ve got that basis, and they’ve also got the contact list of all of the people that they met living in that community. They go out into the workforce with a bunch of friends and a bunch of contacts, and they’re up and running. To do that, you need to build the building, and you need to provide the services. It’s that marriage of hard assets with the soft socialservice provision that is where the real potential of this idea comes together.

GB: Let’s go to completely off-piste. There’s a lot happening: there is the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), there’s Newpin, Northern Beaches Hospital, Ravenhall Prison. You’re as qualified as anybody to crystal-ball-gaze and think about what this will look like in five years’ time. Nationally, what does this whole sector look like as a social market in five or 10 years’ time?

BD: Speaking in terms of Victoria, right now we have a mixed model in the corrections space; there are public prisons and private prisons. You get competition by comparison. The Victorian system works very efficiently as a whole, and I think that’s because we have a mixture of both. Obviously, it will depend on government policies around core services, but I expect that it will continue to advance. I don’t think there will be any huge shift to privatise all correctional services – or new prisons, even – but it will just depend on a project-by-project basis.

LF: In New South Wales, the next five years will be pretty exciting, particularly in this sector. Last year, the Government announced where it wanted to put that money to work if it got the lease of the poles and wires through. Some of that money is going towards the Sydney Metro, which in and of itself is delivering a social service and outcome. It is also being directed towards the justice sector, the education sector, the health sector, and the arts and culture sector.

What we’re probably seeing is this real shift away from the economic type of infrastructure into the social space. It’s really quite exciting in terms of opportunities for everyone to make a real difference in the next five years. We are seeing, from a policy perspective, a real focus on social agenda. The work that NCOSS and IPA are doing is amazing. We’re also seeing a lot of policy work and effort going into making a difference in domestic violence and youth homelessness. That creates a great opportunity for us, in five years’ time or so, to see some real bangfor-buck effects out of that.

The time seems to have come that we’ve stopped talking about it, and we want to just start doing something about it. Being part of it is quite exciting. I think it’s great. We’ve moved, in the last four years, to being clear about what we want to do. The market is embracing that: embracing the outcomes, and embracing all of these conversations. Some are coming faster and harder than others. Some are still trying to figure out what that means in their particular businesses, and I continue to encourage that thinking. It’s going to be great in the next five years, and I think we will make some real differences. We’ve now stopped talking about it, and we’re trying to get on and do something about it.

TH: I tend to agree. I see what’s been happening as almost like people have been getting the room ready to be painted. That takes forever, and you’re setting all the strips around, but we’re actually at the bit where we’re ready to go. From my perspective, I think the social benefit bonds are a really good way of looking at where we are, and where we can be. It’s as if all the work has gone into these very complex instruments, but it’s getting less complex. There are going to be more deals to be made. There is going to be more innovation and potential. Creating those instruments, I assume, will get easier.

Then we can have more and more of those. It means that you’re also getting better outcomes for people. There’s an expectation from the service user that they should get some outcomes for the service that you provide. It’s sharpening the work of the sector, too. We’ve kind of had this bottleneck, that’s now gotten out of the way, and it’s in a doing phase. Housing is a huge issue across Australia; certainly New South Wales is no different. What you’re going to see is huge housing reform: social and affordable, mixed tenures, mixed communities. I loved to hear Rob talking about the mixed communities. This is going to be a new way, and New South Wales is really going to lead the way. We hope it will set a national tone, because I feel like, in some way, they’re so stuck nationally, when at state level we’ve put that aside and we’re just doing.

LF: In New South Wales, we’re quite happy to be out there and engaged in leading the way, but it is important that the whole nation comes together. We should also recognise and acknowledge that there is definite intent and activity happening across the nation. There are a lot of interesting things happening in New Zealand, as well, and it’s important that we all continue to talk and bring those ideas to the table.

RK: The real benefit of moving to the PPP model is that that you can take a 25-year view; you’re not trying to do things in two, three or four years, for an election cycle or a particular fiscal outcome. That’s where the opportunities are in the social service part of that, as well. We were delighted yesterday that we could announce, with HESTA, a $30 million investment that we’ve made in our next social impact investment trust. This is a great endorsement from one of the major superannuation funds for the potential of this market for social service provision in a better way. That will continue to grow. People will continue to look at the financial opportunities that delivering good social purpose outcomes have, and that will create an investor base that will then enable deals to be created.

LF: While we’ve got this momentum, we should absolutely take advantage of it. One step forward is great, but we are talking about taking big leaps and bounds. If we could take big leaps and bounds, this sector would be sorted, and we wouldn’t be here talking about how we could make it better. We see things about initiatives coming out that might bring about 1000 or 3000 or 4000 spaces in social housing, and people say, ‘That’s not very much’. But guess what? That’s 3000 or 4000 more houses than we currently have. That’s actually a great thing, because one step forward is a pathway to great outcomes. In this space, the single steps are really important.

GB: Are there any challenges that we’re going to overcome, or any risks that we need to think about? Could each of you just think about one thing that needs to be addressed, or a risk that we need to be aware of in making this happen?

BD: It’s just the recognition that we can bring all of those parties together, being the public sector, the expertise of the private sector, and all that the nonprofit sector has to offer – and we’re starting that with

Ravenhall. [It would be great if] those parties could get together and just work out how that could transfer into other sectors, whether they’re housing or other social needs.

LF: It’s sustainability; it’s a long game in the sector – it’s not a short game. The biggest challenge is in making sure that we stay the course, and [that we have] consistency in terms of what we’re trying to achieve, in recognising that there are different ways to get there, and in making sure that we do it, and measure the outcomes. Eventually, we can talk about whether we’re doing things well or we’re not doing things so well, and adjust and be flexible to address it again.

TH: It’s about making sure that we keep our eye on the specialty that’s out there in the service system, and that we don’t become generic, but we capacity-build. There’s a real potential in this kind of market for bigger organisations that have scalability, and the capacity to get into the social bonds market, for example, to get the cream. The jewels in the sand are those smaller, specialised services, and that’s the responsibility of my organisation – to build capacity; particularly, I think, of Aboriginal organisations, and community and women’s organisations. There is probably a lack of knowledge around the dollar value that you can attribute to that, and you don’t want to lose that. We don’t want to lose sight of the amazing network of specialisation, nuance and trust that the volunteer network has in the community, and we should tap into what’s already there.

RK: Part of the opportunity here about adopting innovative solutions to new problems taps very much into what Tracy was just pointing out there, and what Leilani said. It’s not necessarily about public or private, or insource or outsource. It’s actually about getting innovative solutions taken to scale, to displace less effective models that we see in the market at the moment. One part of that is access to information.

We had a presentation on the second anniversary of the Newpin program a couple of weeks ago, where we had a couple of participants in the program – a couple of parents – talk. These stories are horrific. A mother who spoke said that the point when her children were taken into foster care was the point when her husband broke her jaw, and she had to go into hospital. He was subsequently convicted and incarcerated. Then she worked through the process of rebuilding her life, and taking her kids out of foster care. But there’s no linkage between the dad’s release from prison, with information back to the support environment, that can then ask, ‘How do we support you now, given that your abusive partner or expartner is back in the community?’

The information at the moment doesn’t flow, and it is not available to the agencies. To really produce these innovative, connected and peoplecentred responses is something that I think is a different type of opportunity to address. When we can get better technology, it will help us get there. Then, the real outcomes that we will be generating will be much more sophisticated and better for the whole community.

Rob Koczkar Chief Executive Officer, Social Ventures Australia

Rob Koczkar joined Social Ventures Australia (SVA) as Chief Executive Officer in October 2014. He has extensive experience in investing and management consulting, along with a deep understanding of the social purpose sector from serving on the boards of Social Ventures Australia, Goodstart Early Learning, and on Mission Australia’s Corporate Advisory Council.

Prior to joining SVA, Mr Koczkar was a managing director of Pacific Equity Partners from 2004–2014, and a principal with Texas Pacific Group. He led investments in a number of companies, including Energy Developments, Spotless, and Collins Foods. Mr Koczkar also spent seven years with Bain & Company, advising clients on issues relating to strategy, mergers, and operating improvements in a wide range of industries.

Mr Koczkar received a Bachelor of Engineering (Hons) in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering from the University of Melbourne.

He currently serves on the boards of Social Ventures Australia, Goodstart Early Learning Limited, Energy Developments Limited and Spotless Group Holdings Limited.

Leilani Frew Executive Director, Head of Infrastructure Structured Finance, NSW Treasury

Leilani Frew is Executive Director and Head of Infrastructure and Structured Finance at NSW Treasury.

As a senior finance professional who has worked in finance and public administration for more than 20 years, Ms Frew has marketleading expertise in providing strategic, commercial and financial advice to assist in the purchase, sale, procurement and/or financing of significant infrastructure, power and energy assets and businesses throughout Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Asia. Ms Frew has previously held senior roles with Queensland Treasury, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, ABN Amro/Royal Bank of Scotland and Moelis & Company.

Ms Frew was recently awarded the ‘Women’s Achievement in Infrastructure’ award at the Infrastructure Partnerships Australia National Infrastructure Awards.

Ben Dempsey Project Director, Department of Justice and Regulation (Victoria)

Ben Dempsey has more than 30 years’ experience in infrastructure development, leading public-private partnerships across a broad range of industry sectors such as corrections, public transport, water and health.

Mr Dempsey is a director of infrastructure advisory firm EIG. In December 2012, the Victorian Department of Justice and Regulation appointed him project director to lead the development and implementation of the Ravenhall Prison PPP Project.

Prior to his current role, Mr Dempsey led the development of earlier Victorian PPP correctional projects, including, as a single transaction, the Metropolitan Remand Centre and the Marngoneet Correctional Centre.

Mr Dempsey has acted for clients in Australia, Germany and Africa, and has conducted multilateral negotiations at an international level.

Graham Brooke Lead Partner – New South Wales Government, KPMG

Mr Brooke is currently leading a number of significant projects in Australia, including the Immigration Detention Services Project, the WestConnex project, the Barangaroo Redevelopment, and the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport Link in Jakarta. Mr Brooke’s previous projects include the NBN Implementation Study, Chatswood Transport Interchange, the South Australia Police and Courts PPP Project, the Single LEAP PPP, and the New South Wales Desalination Plant.

Mr Brooke previously worked with the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom, and was closely involved in the United Kingdom’s major public sector reforms in the Thatcher era.

His experience covers the structuring of complex transactions, development of payment mechanisms, determining appropriate risk allocations, and advising on alternative sources of finance.

Mr Brooke is an Adjunct Professor, Bond University, Department of Sustainability. Previously, Mr Brooke was the National Treasurer of the Australian British Chamber of Commerce (ABCC).

Tracy Howe Chief Executive Officer, NSW Council of Social Service (NCOSS)

Tracy Howe is a legally trained advocate with a commitment to human rights, addressing community disadvantage and gender inequality. Previously, Ms Howe has worked in both government and non-government settings, including with Domestic Violence NSW as chief executive officer, and as a senior legal adviser in Federal Government.

Ms Howe currently sits on the New South Wales Government’s Social Impact Investment Expert Advisory Group, and is appointed to the NSW Domestic and Family Violence Council and the New South Wales Premier’s Council on Homelessness, and was the New South Wales non-government representative on the National Plan Implementation Panel for the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children. Ms Howe is also a Director of Community 21, a community sector–owned bank. Previously, Ms Howe was a delegate with the Australian Women Against Violence Alliance (AWAVA) at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) at the 57th and 58th sessions held at the United Nations in New York.

In February 2015, Ms Howe won the Agenda Setter Award at the NAB Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards. In May 2015, Ms Howe was appointed to the Prime Minister’s COAG Advisory Panel on Reducing Violence against Women.

Ms Howe holds degrees in gender studies and law.

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Hastings is dedicated to delivering reliable and consistent investment returns to a wide range of institutional investors with FUM of A$10.6 billion. Over the past two decades, Hastings has employed A$9.8 billion of investor capital across more than 40 equity investments, and has actively managed A$2.7 billion of investor capital in more than 80 debt infrastructure assets globally.

Hastings asset portfolio predominantly comprises utilities, airports, toll roads and seaports in Australia, the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. The primary focus is on building a diversified portfolio of infrastructure investments. Recent notable equity transactions include the acquisitions of Porterbrook Rail Finance Ltd, one of the three major rolling-stock leasing companies in the United Kingdom, and the Port of Newcastle, which is one of Australia’s largest bulk ports by throughput. Complementing the infrastructure equity capabilities, Hastings executed 23 debt investments across Europe, North America and Australia in the past 24 months to 31 December 2014, with a total committed value of more than A$1.25 billion.

Chief Executive Andrew Day says that the group continues to be ‘an active participant’ in global infrastructure transactions identified, executed and tailored to suit investor needs. ‘We continue to focus on building winning consortiums with like-minded partners,’ Day says. ‘We remain active across a worldwide platform – with a local footprint in key geographies – identifying and investing in attractive investment opportunities [that will] deliver value for investors.’

From its headquarters in Melbourne, Hastings has built a strong global footprint, with offices in Sydney, Singapore, Seoul, Mumbai, London and New York, and employs more than 110 members of staff. The Hastings team covers asset management, business development, client services, portfolio construction and origination.

Hastings is dedicated to the infrastructure sector, and, with more than 20 years of experience, is one of Australia’s longest-running and most qualified infrastructure managers. It established one of the first infrastructure equity funds, Utilities Trust of Australia (UTA), in 1994, and one of the first infrastructure debt funds when it launched the Hastings Yield Fund in 1999. Hastings’ flagship fund, UTA, returned 14 per cent net of fees for the year to 30 June 2015. Investors who have been with the fund since its inception more than 20 years ago received net returns of 11.6 per cent per annum. The Infrastructure Fund, also managed by Hastings, likewise continued to outperform, returning more than 10 per cent for the financial year, and more than 14 per cent per annum since Hastings was appointed as its manager in June 2000.

THE CITY OF CHOICE FOR BIG BUSINESS

Competitive commercial and industrial land prices, a wellqualified workforce, and easy access to Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Adelaide are just some of the reasons that Albury is becoming the city of choice for big business and industry looking to escape the metro rat race.

The resilience of Albury’s economy is reinforced by a diverse industry base, eliminating the reliance on one particular sector for buoyancy, as is often the case in regional cities. Its gross regional product has experienced six per cent growth in the last 12 months, and is currently placed at $2.9 billion, or $5.4 billion when it’s combined with neighbouring Wodonga.

Open to development, AlburyCity Council works closely with businesses to facilitate projects, demystify the processes of local government, and reduce the complexities of establishing and operating in the City. Council decision-makers have taken this philosophy one step further by undertaking the master planning and development of NEXUS, a 450-hectare estate that is suitable for large and heavy industry, in order to continue the City’s positive economic outlook.

Located on the Hume Freeway, only 10 minutes from Albury’s CBD, NEXUS offers customisable land options, and the opportunity for 24/7 operations. A key advantage within NEXUS is the Ettamogah Rail Hub, a common-user intermodal hub located on the Melbourne–Sydney rail line, which provides access to rail services along the east coast.

Businesses also benefit from access to a catchment population of 180,000, as well as domestic and international markets through existing transport infrastructure, including Albury’s regional airport, which services Sydney and Melbourne. These links make NEXUS an ideal distribution site from which 75 per cent of the Australian population, including three major shipping ports, can be serviced by next-day delivery.

NEXUS has been specifically designed for large industrial development, and, with manufacturing as Albury’s largest industry sector, a number of established companies are already operational on site, including the Norske Skog Paper Mill, Overall Forge, the Ettamogah Rail Hub, Bourgault Australia and QR National Freight.

Colin Rees, owner of the Ettamogah Rail Hub, is optimistic about operations at NEXUS. ‘The Hub is capable of handling up to 30,000 containers annually, and we have the capacity and plans for continued growth in the coming years,’ he says. ‘Investment to date is around $15 million, with further development being tailored to meet the growing market demand, along with on-rail warehousing to provide the total logistics solution for the Albury–Wodonga region.’

With a long-term vision in place for industrial development, and the associated supply-chain advantages of the City’s strategic location, Albury is proving to be a winner for businesses, with the nous to move beyond the metro city limits.

For more information on NEXUS and doing business in Albury, contact AlburyCity Economic Development: 02 6023 8268 ecodev@alburycity.nsw.gov.au www.alburycity.nsw.gov.au/nexus