Infrastructure expert calls for red-tape reform

If you listen to people like chief executives, this is people like Jac Nasser, the chairman of BHP . . . theyre pretty clear: its more expensive to get things done, the industrial relations uncertainty is real, Sir Rod, chairman of the federal government advisory body Infrastructure Australia, said yesterday.

Sir Rod said regulatory reform was essential to boost Australias short to medium-term productivity.

If you talk to people in the space . . . theyll tell you the things that worry them are duplication of the environmental assessment process between the federal and the state government . . . higher bid costs and disproportionately complicated bidding processes, he told an Australian British Chamber of Commerce lunch. Theyll talk about some of the challenges they feel in industrial relations . . . and the way they believe thats a step backwards rather than forwards.

Theyll talk about regulation as it relates to green tape, as opposed to red tape. My point is that if you want real short-term productivity improvements, its regulatory reform.

Infrastructure Partnerships Australia chairman Mark Birrell also stepped up calls for small Australian super funds to merge in order to gain the funds and expertise to invest in infrastructure, noting that sovereign wealth funds and offshore pension funds recently snapped up Melbourne toll-road operator ConnectEast.

Two-thirds of [Australian] superannuation funds have no investment in infrastructure theyll have investments in real estate, hotels and things like that but not infrastructure.

And one of the reasons for that is that many of those funds are too small to have the internal skills to be able to research.

We need amalgamation of super funds so they have greater scale, theyll have greater reach in terms of dealing with high-quality assets.

Sir Rod and Mr Birrell were both upbeat on the prospects for Australias education sector, with Mr Birrell tipping it could leapfrog iron ore and coal to become Australias top export earner within decades. Putting infrastructure money into universities I think is an absolute no-brainer I think the business case would be profoundly strong, Mr Birrell said.