Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes. While the legislation is broad, in the proposed mandate we have specified some conditions, or some preferences, for infrastructure that must be or have the capacity to be used by multiple users and/or have wider public benefit. The government has expressed that it is particularly looking at infrastructure that can facilitate a wider degree of private investment over an area—infrastructure such as ports, railway lines, airports, water infrastructure and telecommunications networks, and energy distribution networks as well, for that matter. Roads potentially fit that definition, but we have always made the point, to be clear, that this is a lending facility. The projects will need to prove in some way how they are going to pay the money back to the government. Roads typically will not provide such security, but they are not specifically excluded either. It is a very broad range of infrastructure that can be proposed, but there are strict conditions about how the facility will interpret the mandate and apply them to particular projects.