Purpose and application

These principles will apply to the Commonwealth and all States/Territories (and their agencies, including in some jurisdictions, public trading enterprises and Government Owned Corporations where applicable), so as to achieve a consistent and efficient risk allocation framework for the delivery of economic infrastructure PPPs across jurisdictions.

These principles will not apply retrospectively to projects that have closed or are currently in the market.

While recognising the need for consistency across jurisdictions, governments also appreciate the need for flexibility within this framework to allow for jurisdiction specific needs that may arise as a result of differing planning regimes, site conditions, legislative requirements or other risks or policies. Accordingly, in some areas these principles acknowledge that approaches for dealing with a particular risk or contractual issues, may differ across jurisdictions while still remaining within the overall risk framework of the principles.

Each jurisdiction will issue supplementary guidance material for their agencies, identifying the positions that will apply to economic infrastructure PPPs delivered within their jurisdiction.

As these principles are a high level guide, such supplementary guidance material may also provide further detail on the implementation of these principles within the relevant jurisdiction.

Some of the positions in these principles may differ from positions previously adopted (and with which market participants may be familiar) in economic infrastructure PPPs at a jurisdictional level. However, this has been a necessary consequence of achieving a nationally consistent and standard risk allocation framework which will provide greater certainty and assist in reducing the cost and time of contractual negotiations for all parties. In addition, in the interests of consistency, terminology has been 'normalised' across jurisdictions (e.g. Key Risk Events vs MAE Events). Please refer to the attached Glossary.

Given that each project has unique characteristics and risks, use of these principles will not reduce the importance of detailed project by project analysis of individual risks. Accordingly, parties may depart from these NCPs for Economic Infrastructure on a project specific basis.