National Reconstruction Fund Submission

The Council’s submission recommends eight key actions for ensuring the National Reconstruction Fund (NRF) successfully promotes investment in the identified priority areas as follows:

  1. The NRF replicate the statutory framework of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, striking the right balance between predictability and certainty, and the discretion to respond to changes in market dynamics.
  2. Establish an advisory panel of industry and investment community experts for periodic engagement with the NRF Board to ensure the NRF’s settings are conducive to maximising private investments in the Federal Government’s priority areas.
  3. Definitions and scope for investing in priority areas be sufficiently broad to allow the NRF the ability to co-invest in activities that will best build the desired sovereign capabilities and industrial base. 
  4. In setting the NRF’s targeted rate of return, Government recognises and incorporates the public policy benefits of NRF investments into the rate of return.
  5. To support the longevity of the NRF, ensure mechanisms exist to periodically review and amend the seven priority areas to ensure they remain appropriate from national priority and investability perspectives.
  6. Ensure that the NRF’s risk tolerance does not preclude involvement in early stage or emerging investments within stated priority areas.
  7. Empower the NRF to make cornerstone investments at the size and scale required to catalyse private sector investment.  
  8. As a complementary measure to the NRF, introduce a skills and workforce package that includes the doubling of the Global Talent Scheme and facilitation of other forms of skilled migration, provides federal funding that establishes STEM skills into the Australian school curriculum and amplifies programs that provide visa extensions to foreign students upon graduation. 

 

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