The pre-Budget talk was all about nation building through sizeable infrastructure projects. Now regional Australia is set to benefit after Scott Morrison opened the chequebook to bring forward a host of big ticket items from last year’s $50 billion infrastructure program.
By Professor Christine Smith, Griffith Business School
Good debt financed infrastructure
The 2017-18 budget will be framed around making a distinction between “good” and “bad” debt on the premise that the use of debt financing to cover ongoing or recurrent expenditure (e.g. welfare payments) is ‘bad’ while use of debt to cover expenditure on infrastructure which leads to future growth and/or productivity enhancement is ‘good’.
As a result various regions have been eagerly waiting to hear if the much vaunted boost to federally funded infrastructure projects will benefit their locality in either the short or the long term. The challenge for the government is to ensure that projects selected are not judged by
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