Infrastructure administration might be banal but it’s costing us tens of billions

When it comes to the waste of public money, poor administration and — less often — actual rorting, it’s always hard to beat Defence, where the projects come with queues of zeroes on the price tags and lifespans that encompass multiple governments.

But infrastructure provision is the quiet achiever of poor government. We often do it very badly. We hardly ever do it well and we spend, and waste, a lot of money on it.

And unlike defence, that happens with minimal public or media interest.