Infrastructure Australia is looking to proponents to structure a response along the lines of Infrastructure Australia's Reform and Investment Framework. The Framework should guide the documentation of information, data, analysis, outputs and conclusions in a systematic way.
By responding to all seven stages of the Framework, submissions will be able to demonstrate the rigour that has been applied in planning and investment decisions, which is a critical and fundamental piece of analysis and assessment to support a request for support from Infrastructure Australia.
Infrastructure Australia expects that the information and evidence it requires will generally already be available to proponents, since the stages within the framework ought to be central to the robust decision-making process which proponents will have carried out before submitting an initiative to Infrastructure Australia for support. The quality and robustness of this information is vital for all stages of the Framework: comprehensive and high quality information should be provided pro-actively by proponents.
Any submission which is seeking a funding decision will need to meet all these requirements, since Infrastructure Australia will only give advice to Governments (often in relation to hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds) on the basis of comprehensive and robust evidence base. However, where a submission seeks engagement with Infrastructure Australia as a business case is developed - that is, the initiative is at an early stage of planning - Infrastructure Australia welcomes such engagement and the supporting information should be in accordance with the initiative's stage of development and need not necessarily cover all the elements described here. Therefore, Infrastructure Australia relies on the judgement of proponents to assess each initiative's stage of development and the respective level of information available. If relevant information is unavailable or if there are gaps in a proponent's processes, this should be explained.
To provide guidance, the following sections outline in further detail the specific information requirements that Infrastructure Australia seeks from proponents for each of the seven stages.
Infrastructure Australia has also developed detailed "templates" to help proponents compile and present the information in a submission to Infrastructure Australia in a clear and consistent manner. These templates are available at the Infrastructure Australia website.2
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2 www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/publications.aspx