Key government infrastructure investments are ending up as super-expensive white elephants

A primary cause is that voters and politicians don't perceive public money and public assets in the same light as their own resources. Which politicians would be prepared to invest their own money in the VFT, Inland Rail or Snowy 2.0? None of them, though they will happily waste taxpayers' money on hare-brained projects if they think there are votes to be gained!

Another consideration is that taxpayers generally don't consider themselves as having "ownership" over public assets and collected taxes. These instead tend to be fatalistically regarded as money already gone. (48 per centof Australia's 12.2 million "income units" pay no net tax anyway so why would they care? ) Furthermore, most taxpayers often don't realise what a large amount of money, say, a billion dollars is, and frequently don't even blink at wasted billions ("not their money"). There is also a tendency for individuals to see public investments as "free" and to favour any that are of benefit to themselves, irrespective of cost to the public purse.

Do the math on the cost of the Newcastle to Sydney VFT, for example. The project will mainly benefit commuters from Newcastle and the central Coast travelling to and from Sydney. One arrives at a horrendous cost if the $93 billion outlay is compared with the mere 226,000 dwellings that exist in Newcastle and the Cenrtal Coast. The cost per household is even more frightening if you then limit the comparison to only (the far fewer) households with members likely to commute on the route.

In my view, there is no fail-proof solution to the problem of politicians wasting mega-dollars on foolish infrastructure and other public schemes, though tightening budget environments and growing debts are an increasing limitation. It would also help if Infrastructure Australia was given stronger powers to report on the viability of proposed public investments. The trouble is that it is rarely a good career move for a bureaucrat to tell politicians what they don't want to hear. This is the reason why the best Auditor-Generals are nearly always those close to retirement and therefore unconcerned with future patronage from their political masters.