Professor Sara Bice fronts Senate inquiry on infrastructure finance
“People live in places, not projects,” Professor Sara Bice told a Commonwealth Senate inquiry.
Professor Bice has given testimony to the 2026 Commonwealth Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee's Public Hearing on 'Financial Support for State and Territory Infrastructure Projects'.
She presented evidence as the Director of the ANU Institute for Infrastructure in Society (I2S) on behalf of submission co-authors Dr Kirsty Jones, Kirsty O'Connell and Dr Ruth O'Connor.
She noted that business cases and federal oversight mechanisms often fail to require early ‘social due diligence’, meaning community concerns, needs and priorities are not systematically identified or used to inform design, multicriteria analysis, risk management or value creation.
Professor Bice focused on five recommendations to improve the oversight and success of infrastructure funding.
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Integrate place-based social assessment into Gateway Reviews.
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Incentivise adoption of integrated derisking, incorporating social risks and benefits into infrastructure funding allocation and project development model selection.
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Require measurement and reporting on social licence, social benefit-creation and community resilience to evidence how investments affect social, cultural and community concerns.
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Introduce a Social Benefit Framework and Delivery Plan to identify design choices and delivery processes that will realise social benefit creation, early in project design.
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Encourage projects to embed qualified social practitioners in project governance and ensure appropriate resources and budgets are allocated to social and community engagement.
I2S data spanning 8 years shows that ‘stakeholder and community pressure’ ranks among the top three most impactful factors for costly project delays or cancellations, according to industry professionals.
“Strengthened Commonwealth oversight of social and community project considerations will deliver: Earlier issue detection and fewer late-stage disruptions, comparable data across jurisdictions, better value for money and higher project acceptance and resilience achieved through community-centred decisions and genuine benefit creation aligned with communities’ priorities,” the submission stated.
The committee is due to make its report mid September 2026.
You can read the full I2S submission and watch the public hearing recording here.
The ANU Institute for Infrastructure in Society (I2S), based at the Crawford School of Public Policy, is Australia’s leading institute for social risk management, social licence, social value and community engagement in infrastructure