Australia's next infrastructure market may be underwater

When was the last time a philanthropist donated to an Australian sewer? Or an electricity transmission grid, or train station?

It is almost unheard of, because Australia recognises that high-functioning nations require robust infrastructure supported by long-term investment to ensure long-term consistency, scale, and performance. 

Major infrastructure sectors have contributed around 9 to 10 percent of yearly GDP since the 1970s and supported hundreds of thousands of Australian jobs across diverse sectors. There is  also a $242 billion public infrastructure pipeline designed to keep it that way. 

Yet the "blue economy" makes a similar contribution. The multiple industries that depend on Australia's oceans and estuaries generate $229 billion in economic output, support 712,000 jobs, and contribute 9.1 percent of GDP.

But for such a sea-proud country that boasts of being "girt by sea", ocean health still tends to be treated  very differently from the infrastructure on which the rest of the economy depends.

Too often, environmental interventions rely on episodic grants, philanthropy or short-term programmes, without the institutions, operating systems and long-term financing expected of other essential infrastructure.

Imagine funding the maintenance of the Sydney Harbour Bridge through a succession of GoFundMe campaigns.

The analogy is imperfect. An ocean is not a bridge, nor can an ecosystem simply be owned and operated like a road or transmission network.

But the infrastructure lens is useful because it changes the question.

Instead of asking only how to fund another environmental project, we can ask something more fundamental: what does it take to deliver an environmental outcome reliably over time?

That is an infrastructure question.

A promising start, but not enough

Australia has already begun moving in this direction.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics alongside the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, publishes National Ocean Accounts built under international environmental-economic standards. These are designed to measure the ocean not simply as a place where economic activity occurs, but through the extent and condition of ocean ecosystems and the services they provide.

Australia recently launched its Sustainable Ocean Plan intended to establish a national vision for a healthy and productive ocean through 2040.

And, as a nation, it funds highly specialised marine technology and scientific infrastructure to monitor the health of this asset, including through platforms such as the Marine National Facility and CSIRO's AquaWatch.

These moves are important, but recognition is only the beginning. A Sustainable Ocean Plan needs more than ambition; it needs a delivery system.

That means clarity about responsibility and accountability, action at programme and project level, reliable operators, long-term financing, and measurement that tells us whether interventions are actually working.

These details may attract fewer headlines than a billion-dollar fund or a new blue bond. But they are the foundations that capital is waiting for.

So before we can expect capital to move, we must first build something worth financing.

Bringing infrastructure discipline to the sea

Take ocean plastic. 

Most of it reaches the sea from around a thousand rivers, so the real work happens upstream: identifying which rivers carry the most waste, installing barriers that catch it before the river mouth, running them through flood and monsoon, moving what they collect into a waste system with the capacity to take it, and weighing the result so someone can say whether it worked. 

None of that ever ends. The river delivers more waste next year, and the year after that, so the barriers need a permanent operator and a budget that renews.

The same pattern runs all ocean interventions, so our approach to them all should meet the infrastructure standard. That work starts this year with several critical steps.

Firstly, we must  get the funding structure right.

A river barrier, a restored mangrove, and a wastewater plant each carry different risks and different revenues. Likewise each initiative that could bolster our ocean health suits a different kind of capital. 

Some need public or concessional money. Others earn commercial returns. Others still become viable only when a government or a company agrees to pay for a measured result. Choosing correctly makes a difference.

Secondly, delivery ownership will always be key. Mangrove restoration, coastal resilience, and wastewater treatment each need an institution that owns the work and outlives the ministers who announce it.

Thirdly, we must send capability as well as money. Australia has the engineering, the marine science, and the financial institutions to help neighbours across the Pacific and Southeast Asia prepare their own coastal projects to the point where investors can fund them.

And, finally,  this evidence must make its way to COP31. 

Countries are pushing for an ocean roadmap in November to carry ocean priorities through the climate process and, as President of Negotiations, Australia will draft the text. Turning up with ocean work that is funded and running will give us greater standing to ask other countries for it too.

In the end, the Harbour Bridge isn't paid for with donations because we know how to properly finance infrastructure. 

The opportunity now is to broaden what we recognise as infrastructure in the first place. 

Given the strength and importance of Australia's ocean industries, the next entries on that list may be sitting below the waterline.