Finally, I just want to focus on where this "NAIF loan" myth...

Finally, I just want to focus on where this "NAIF loan" myth came from - April, 2016, a bunch of media did the rounds where an NT Government employee was lobbying for a change to the NAIF rules - one of the stories (available at https://icn.org.au/news/northern-te...lopment-project-sea-dragon-northern-territory) contains this section:

"In a previous interview with ABC Rural, the general manager of the Northern Australia Development Office in Darwin, Luke Bowen, said Project Sea Dragon would be deserving of consideration for a NAIF loan.​

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"The benefits of that [project] when it's fully developed will be enormous in terms of the number of people being employed in the region," he said.​

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"The knock-on effect to contractors, suppliers and people in the local community could be enormous.​

"So we'd argue that the criteria for [NAIF funding] needs to be flexible enough so that we do have the capacity for projects like that, which do have much wider benefits to a region, to be considered, or at least components of them that relate to critical enabling infrastructure."​

Sounds like a slam-dunk, right? Well, strip away the public servant guff, and you get:

"we'd argue that the criteria for [NAIF funding] needs to be flexible enough so that projects which have much wider benefits to a region or at least components of them that relate to critical enabling infrastructure, can be considered"​

The NAIF rules were changed in 2018 so that Mr Bowen got his wish.  In the ministerial directive, issued this year, the NAIF can consider those components of PSD which might be considered "critical enabling infrastructure" can be considered for financing by NAIF - I've just categorised them as "ancillary things" because they are not directly related to getting all those yummy prawns paying those yummy dividends into my under-nourished bank account