For centuries, governments have used private contractors to provide a wide variety of public services.[1] More recently, partnerships between governments and private contractors have become a feature of the 'new public management' ('NPM') reform movement that has radically altered public administration processes across countries in the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development ('OECD') in its attempts to increase the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of the public sector.[2] The term 'public private partnership(s)' ('PPP(s)'), while universally used, has different contemporary meanings and manifestations.[3] Differences in PPP models stem from situationally-specific contextual factors that affect their outworking in different jurisdictions over time and, in turn, their nature, purpose, characteristics, implementation and oversight.
This introductory paper on PPPs has several purposes. First, it examines various partnership relationships recently used by Australian governments to deliver infrastructure-based services, and distinguishes between different PPP models that have evolved in the local context. Second, it considers the nature of PPPs and how, theoretically, their primary purpose is achieved in the pre-contractual stage. Third, it provides empirical evidence of the number, category and cost to governments of PPPs contracted in Australia at December 2005. Fourth, the paper presents the results of a recent empirical study into all stand-alone performance audits of PPPs undertaken by Australian auditors-general in the period between 1994 and 2006.[4]