The public has grown more conscious of the methodology behind major infrastructure decisions, as a result of poor past experiences with big projects, and rapid technological change.
That’s the view of Cristina Cifuentes, a commissioner of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, who addressed an OECD Forum of Governance of Infrastructure in Paris on April 17.
Cifuentes, who oversees the ACCC’s role in key infrastructure areas including rail, told the forum infrastructure delivery has in the past focused on assets that deliver services, rather than the services themselves and whether the needs of customers are being met.
“Engineering design, financial viability, construction, the efficiency of system operations, and ongoing asset management have been the driving factors in many infrastructure decisions,” she said.
“For the most part, this has served the community well, particularly at a time when the services needed were reasonably basic and affordable. Consumers by and large were satisfied with what they were being offered and had confidence in the decisions being made by others on their behalf.
“In the past 10 years though, we’ve seen the emergence of the more assertive consumer spurred on by poor service experience, rapid technological change, changing expectations and ability to give voice to concerns.”
More than this, Cifuentes, who holds degrees in both Law and Economics and previously served as a director of the Hunter Water Corporation, said today’s consumers expect their infrastructure “will meet a range of social, economic and environmental objectives as well”.
“While this is not unexpected, it has been accompanied by a significant loss in confidence in the decision chain that delivers infrastructure,” she continued.
“Consumers have lost faith in the traditional delivery model where the asset itself was the primary concern and the asset owner or operator, the primary decision maker. There is a growing demand for a customer-driven culture of infrastructure design, delivery and operation, which puts at the forefront the service needs of customers and the community rather than the physical assets that will be used to deliver those services.”
If the community is to have confidence in major infrastructure decisions, the ACCC commissioner said government, regulators, consumers, infrastructure operators and investors must all acknowledge their shared responsibility for the quality of services and long-term decisions.
“Effective stakeholder engagement is not just communication,” Cifuentes said, “and it should not be seen in terms of one-off transactional processes, for example, seeking one off input into a five yearly tariff setting process.
“Effective engagement has to be continuous and contiguous across all activities which affect consumers. Most importantly, it has to occur well before critical decision points are reached. It must also recognise the role of intermediaries in service delivery, not just final customers.”