The cross city tunnel in Sydney has been a fairly spectacular failure as a Public Private Partnership – the operating company has gone into receivership less than 2 years after the tunnel opening in August 2005.

This paper starts with a review of the political environment that encouraged councils to exercise a more entrepreneurial outlook but to do so from a business-like approach with the aim of utilising the private sector wherever possible to supply and/or finance a majority of services, utilities and infrastructure.

In Australia most social housing is provided by state government agencies with a small community housing sector, and the total social housing sector accounts for 5 per cent of stock. Since the 1990s governments have introduced 'managerialist' reforms to the sector in order to increase accountability and flexibility. In this paper Terry Burke looks at...