Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Curtin for her question. It's true—public money must be used wisely. It's taxpayers' money. Earlier a comment was made about the NAIF being a method of subsidy. It's an enabler, but it is a concessional loan scheme. The idea and intent, and indeed what it does, is crowding in that money. It is an important principle that it shouldn't compete and seek to exclude any private capital. Private capital is really important in the projects that the NAIF seeks to enable. What we have found through working with the staff at the NAIF and its CEO and board is that they often redirect a lot of inquiries for projects to other providers of capital, and some of them may be Commonwealth specialist investment vehicles or just private capital groupings.

In renewables, the NAIF has supported about three different projects and a number of projects in critical minerals, and they are almost like an anchor that brings in that other piece of capital to make the whole thing work. It's an important part of how the NAIF works. So I do understand your concerns.

How we monitor that is through the NAIF reporting to the board. The board is a very competent board, and I acknowledge the chair of the board and the whole team for the work they do. They report regularly to me, and, of course, we monitor all the projects. All the projects come before us for us to have a look at, and we're well aware of the concern that we don't use public money unwisely and make sure that we do get in that private capital as well as this public capital. Thanks so much for your question.

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