Taxpayers foot bill in search for NAIF chief
TAXPAYERS have forked out more than $70,000 to help find a new part-time boss for the agency charged with developing Northern Australia.
A US-based company has been handed the contract – worth $71,500 – to help find a new chairman or woman for the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility. It comes as the NAIF is facing pressure over its performance, having approved finance for just two projects despite being announced more than three years ago with much fanfare.
The organisation was established by the Coalition government to hand out interest-free loans – totalling $5 billion – to companies wanting to develop projects in the north.
No projects in Queensland have received finance, although it is understood at least one project in the state is close to being approved.
The Opposition’s Northern Australia spokesman Jason Clare said the NAIF had yet to create a single job in regional Queensland.
“Regional Queensland has been sold a dud,” Mr Clare said. “(PM Malcolm) Turnbull’s NAIF has been sitting there for more than three years and the only money it’s managed to spend has been on executive salaries, travel perks and consultants.”
Korn Ferry International, which is based in Los Angeles but has an office in Sydney, has won the $71,500 tender to search for a new chairman or woman. Former chairwoman Sharon Warburton stepped down last month because of family health reasons.
It is understood the role, which is a part-time position, attracts a salary of about $150,000. The two projects which have received concessional loans from the NAIF include a barramundi farm outside Darwin and a marine support base in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
The government was recently forced to change the investment criteria so that more projects could be approved for concessional loans.
These include allowing the NAIF to fund all of a project’s total debt and broadening the definition of infrastructure so that supply services can be funded.
The $5 billion NAIF was announced by the government in 2015, and set up a year later, with the aim of helping more projects get off the ground in Northern Australia.
Indian company Adani was to receive a loan from the NAIF to develop a rail line from the Abbot Point port to its Carmichael coal project, but Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk vetoed the proposal.
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