A reader has alerted us to a very interesting article in The Age: Government denies right to know ripoff. Kenneth Davidson discusses the current planning process in Victoria, whereby many public projects are run by 'public private partnerships' (PPPs). These arrangements are designed to curry favour with powerful business interests, who then enjoy the protection of the State government. If managed poorly, these projects may be "privately profitable but socially wasteful".

These projects generally have very poor transparency. Any cost-benefit analyses conducted are rarely published, and, even if they are, the public is not given access to the underlying data. Commercial confidentiality is used as an excuse to limit the disclosure of information. Consider the following quote:

...[the system] lend[s] both legitimacy and authority to arrangements that would be entirely questionable if subject to any reasonable and authentic scrutiny. That is why the government has frustrated attempts to gain any meaningful information by classifying the contractual detail as ''confidential''.

The Regional Rail Link may not be a PPP, but this is beginning to sound familiar...