The Australia Institute: Infrastructure fund lacks transparency

The Australia Institute (TAI) said the federal government’s $5 billion Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund (NAIF) lacks resources and lags behind other comparable government organisations in terms of process and disclosure and in operational funding.

The government has said it would “look seriously” at using the fund to provide $1 billion to build a railway to carry coal from the controversial Adani Carmichael coalmine in Queensland to port for export and for a “clean coal” baseload power plant.

The NAIF now has four projects in due diligence but has not revealed what these projects are.

TAI said the NAIF has refused to say whether it has any documents containing the key words “Adani”, “Galilee basin” or “Carmichael”.

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