An exposé · Australia

Privatise the profit.
Socialise the loss.

The roads, the ports, the power lines, the land registry, even the hospital — assets your parents' taxes built were sold or leased to private consortia on decades-long, inflation-locked terms. Then those same monopolies were bought back with your compulsory super. When the deal wins, private investors keep the profit. When it fails, the public eats the loss — and either way, you keep paying the toll. Here are the receipts.

See how the trick works Check the sources Read the ledger →
12% of every wage is now compulsorily paid into super — much of it invested straight back into the toll roads, ports and power lines you already pay to use
2060 the year Sydney's WestConnex can keep charging tolls — a road part-owned by workers' own retirement savings
CPI or 4% whichever is greater — the contractual floor under which key toll prices rise every single year, forever
"in confidence" the stamp on the contracts, so the public that pays for the deal is not allowed to read it

The four-card trick

Privatisation and "public-private partnerships" are sold with words that sound like common sense — efficiency, risk transfer, no cost to taxpayers, unlocking capital. Here is what each phrase hides, each unpacked with sources on its own page.

1. "The private sector runs it more efficiently."

Government borrows more cheaply than any company alive. When you hand a monopoly to private investors, they must earn a return on equity — often 8–15% — on top of their higher borrowing costs. That gap doesn't come from magic efficiency; it comes out of your tolls, fares and bills. The UK's own auditor found its PFI hospitals and schools cost around 40% more than public financing. See how the deal works →

2. "It transfers the risk off the taxpayer."

Only until it doesn't. When private toll roads went bust on fantasy traffic forecasts — Cross City Tunnel, Lane Cove Tunnel, Brisbane's Clem7 and AirportLink — the early investors were wiped out, but the road kept tolling, sold cheap to the next owner. When a PPP hospital operator collapsed, the government had to step back in. Profit is private; catastrophe is shared. Follow the socialised losses →

3. "It costs the public nothing — it's private money."

It's your money. Industry-super vehicles like IFM Investors and funds like AustralianSuper own big stakes in the airports, ports, power networks and toll roads. So you pay a toll to a road your own retirement savings own — and the fund skims a management fee off the top on the way past. You paid to build it, you pay to use it, and you pay to own it. See how your super buys it back →

4. "It's a normal commercial deal — nothing to see."

Then why can't you read it? PPP contracts are routinely stamped "commercial-in-confidence" and released only in redacted form, years late. Auditors-general have complained for two decades that the secrecy makes value-for-money impossible to check. The deal is done in your name, with your assets, but not in your sight. See what's redacted →

The machine, in one loop

Once you see it, you can't unsee it. The same dollar leaves you three times and comes back to the same small circle of players every time.

Public builds the assetyour parents' taxes → Government sells / leases it"budget repair" → You pay tolls & billsCPI-locked, rising → Your super buys the assetand charges you a fee ↺ Politicians call it a win

Every step is defensible on its own. Put together, it's a mechanism for moving public wealth into private hands and calling it reform — while the price you pay to move, to keep the lights on and to ship goods across the country ratchets up faster than inflation, as the cost of living. See the inflation machine →

Start anywhere

The toll roads →

One company controls almost all of Sydney and Melbourne's motorways, on concessions running to 2060 and beyond, escalating faster than your wages.

Your own money →

How compulsory super quietly became the buyer of the very monopolies that bill you — and why the fee is charged both ways.

Socialised losses →

The busted toll roads and collapsed operators where "risk transfer" turned into a public bailout — and the asset kept charging.

Power bills →

How privatised poles-and-wires and "gold-plating" under a guaranteed return baked network profits into every electricity bill.

The sell-off →

Ports on 50-year leases, land registries handed to consortia, airports on 99-year terms — the public counter, closed.

The ledger →

The big Australian PPP and privatisation deals in one table: who bought what, for how long, on what escalation, and how it went.

What this site is — and isn't

This is not an argument that every road should be free or that private capital is evil. It's a demand for honesty and consent. Some of these deals may even have been worth doing. But they were struck in secret, priced against forecasts that turned out to be fiction, escalated above inflation by contract, and — increasingly — sold back to the public through their own compulsory savings, all without anyone ever putting the question to a vote.

Every figure here is drawn from the public record: auditors-general, the ACCC, the energy and pricing regulators, budget papers, company filings and reputable reporting. Where a number is a government or company claim, contested, or illustrative, it's labelled as such. Start with how a PPP actually works, or jump to the sources.

Know where a body is buried? We work with whistleblowers inside treasuries, super funds, infrastructure managers and toll operators. Confidential contact: whistle@theradicalparty.com.