Finance it the cheap way: public borrowing
The single biggest cost in a PPP is the cost-of-capital gap — private investors demanding an 8–15% return where a government could borrow at a few per cent. The fix is not exotic: let the government borrow to build public assets, and hire private firms to build them under ordinary, transparent construction contracts — without handing over ownership or a 50-year toll. You still get private expertise and private jobs. You just don't sign away the monopoly and the income stream for a generation.
Keep the natural monopolies public
Some things are monopolies by nature — you can't build a second competing power grid, port channel or land-title registry down the street. Handing a natural monopoly to a private owner doesn't create competition; it just creates a private tax-collector with a guaranteed return.
- Networks, ports, registries, water: keep them in public hands, run at cost, returning their surplus to the public that owns them — not leased out for 99 years to earn a regulated rent for private and super owners.
- If they're already sold: don't automatically renew or extend concessions; let them expire and return to public ownership, and resist the "asset recycling" pressure to sell the next one to plug the hole left by the last.
- Essential services (hospitals, prisons): the Northern Beaches lesson is that when failure isn't an option, "risk transfer" is a fiction — so don't pay a premium for it. NSW has now legislated to ban acute-hospital PPPs. That's a model, not an anomaly.
If you must do a deal, do it in the open
Where a partnership genuinely makes sense, the minimum price of doing it should be that the public can check it. Every objection to this is an objection to being caught.
Publish the contract
Full terms, risk allocation and payment schedules public by default. "Commercial-in-confidence" should be the rare, justified exception — not the standard cover. See the secrecy →
Publish the comparator
Release the "public sector comparator" — the government's own estimate of doing it publicly — so anyone can see whether the PPP was really cheaper.
Ban above-CPI escalators
No more "greater of CPI or 4%" ratchets on essential-service monopolies. If a price must rise, it tracks inflation — not a guaranteed real increase forever. See the ratchet →
Close the revolving door
Real cooling-off periods and conflict rules for the officials and ministers who sign these deals and then work for the firms that win them. See who cashes in →
The real fix: consent
Every reform above is good, and every one of them will be watered down or reversed the moment the political convenience of the next sell-off outweighs it — because the people who benefit are in the room, and you are not. The durable fix isn't a better clause in a contract. It's changing who gets to decide whether a public asset is sold at all.
A public asset is wealth held in common. No government should be able to sell it — or lease it for 99 years, or buy it back with your compulsory savings — without the owners' consent. And the owners are you. — the argument of this whole site
That is what direct, radical democracy is for: putting the policy — not just the politician — to the people who have to live with it, and giving them the power to veto a deal done to them without consent. See how to push for it →
Cross-references: The cost-of-capital gap · The hospital ban · What the UK did · Take action.