Build community trust in infrastructure decision-making and institutions by ensuring infrastructure decisions are transparent, and reflect place-based community needs and preferences.
- Low-hanging fruit
- Destabilised world
Key messages
In an environment of rapid change, uncertainty and risk, it is critical to embed new practices to ensure infrastructure delivers affordable, quality, accessible and cost-effective services.
Inclusive decision-making harnesses government, academic, industry, business and community knowledge about places and the infrastructure and services people need to support quality of life and productivity. Collective knowledge supports value-for-money investments in infrastructure that build community trust.
Increasing transparency around how infrastructure decisions are made will inform communities, build trust and allow feedback at a time, and in a way, that can be most useful. Long-term, coordinated planning processes that connect sectors, governments, businesses and communities will ensure infrastructure delivers against a clear vision that benefits all Australians.
What are the impacts?
The reform will improve governance by tailoring infrastructure and services to localised and place-based community needs. Increased transparency will provide more information on decision-making. Post-completion reviews and publicly released information about infrastructure decisions will increase trust in institutions and improve social licence.
A consistent approach to sharing and gathering community data, improving engagement and transparency will likely result in increased consideration of communities’ needs and improved access for users, as well as place-based outcomes. The impacts of inclusive community consultation will vary, depending on the place. However, it is likely communities will use their knowledge to ensure infrastructure is efficiently built and operated for the unique needs of their area.
Better cross-sectoral collaboration to identify needs, improved funding mechanisms and clear methods of acquiring land and sequencing delivery to meet long-term community needs will facilitate economic benefits. These include cost savings for users and taxpayers, and benefits derived from capturing land’s highest-value use.
How easy is it to implement?
While new processes are likely to be required, there are existing mechanisms and best-practice frameworks to draw from, reducing the complexity and time required to implement.
These processes are likely to incur some new costs, however these should be offset when fewer projects are delayed by community opposition. Greater transparency should mean better value-for-money infrastructure projects.
All levels of government have the expertise and capacity to implement the reform. However, community consultation and data-gathering, standardisation and coordination will take time, resourcing and training.
How certain are the outcomes?
The reform has very little risk and attracts high community and government acceptance. It champions community-centred, localised decision-making and more transparent infrastructure decisions.
The evidence base that informs these reforms is recent and reputable, which provides a high level of confidence, even though the expected impacts of community engagement are not immediately clear. Place-based, inclusive engagement will result in unknown impacts, depending on a community’s preferences. The evidence base that informs this reform is reliable, recent and reputable. Governments have control but the reform relies on coordination between all levels of government.
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Lessons learned
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| Governance |
Trust in infrastructure industry
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| Governance |
Participation in regulation decisions
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Read more about this recommendation in 2.3 Transparency and collaboration builds trust in decisions in the 2021 Australian Infrastructure Plan.
Reform implementation pathway
This recommendation comprises of outcomes and activities, which form the reform's implementation pathway.
The implementation pathway is designed to guide change agents on the supporting activities necessary to achieve the overall reform.
For each outcome and activity, we propose change agents to act as:
- Proposed sponsor: facilitate, coordinate and champion the recommendation
- Proposed lead: deliver specific activities or lead related outcomes
- Support: share ownership, contributions or knowledge to enable the reform process.
Improve community sustainability and build trust by embedding the quadruple-bottom-line in government decision-making and assessment.
0-5 years
Facilitate participatory community engagement and build trust by clarifying consistent engagement and reporting requirements, resourcing plans and measurement mechanisms.
0-5 years
Ensure consideration of the quadruple-bottom-line by adding engagement standards across assurance process stages.
0-5 years
Increase transparency and maintain social licence by reporting on activities as part of Environmental, Social and Governance and Corporate Social Responsibly reporting processes using existing standards and measures.
0-5 years
Improve the business case for community engagement by conducting research on the benefits of effective engagement.
0-5 years
Understand the effectiveness of engagement activities in meeting quadruple-bottom-line outcomes, including equity and accessibility, by producing public reports on the impact of community feedback on decisions.
0-5 years
Make more transparent and consistent decisions throughout infrastructure projects and services by responding to, and understanding, place-based community needs and preferences at state and territory, regional and local government levels.
0-5 years
Align decision-making with community needs and preferences by incorporating decision-makers, communities, infrastructure owners and operators into early strategic planning stages. Collect information by conducting audits, assessing place-based community data and publicly releasing findings.
0-5 years
Facilitate transparent place-based decisions by creating a framework to support the collection and public release of reliable, meaningful and comparable data across agencies and local governments.
0-5 years
Build community trust by providing transparent, timely and clear information about infrastructure decision-making and post completion assessments.
0-5 years
Increase transparency by committing to, developing and releasing post completion reviews. Establish delivery dates for staged reviews when the project begins. Include information on whether the economic case in the project’s business case was realised, lessons learnt, and whether the project was on time and within budget.
0-5 years
Improve transparency and community trust and understanding by publicly releasing key information supporting infrastructure decisions, subject to privacy and data sovereignty considerations.
0-5 years
Encourage national consistency and cross-sector coordination by developing a national report highlighting best practice, including case studies based on publicly released data.
5-10 years
Improve community certainty and confidence and meet long-term community needs by sequencing infrastructure delivery.
0-5 years
Ensure the acquisition and management of corridors in the long-term interests of users and taxpayers by identifying high-value corridors, conducting corridor feasibility studies and establishing joint funding and governance arrangements.
0-5 years
Allow infrastructure co-location, precinct development and agency cost-sharing by centrally managing land acquisition and management.
0-5 years
Meet infrastructure costs while maintaining community support by developing transparent, hypothecated levies on adjacent land and infrastructure service catchments, such as the Western Australian Government’s Metropolitan Region Improvement Tax.
0-5 years