The opportunities and tensions around drawing on superannuation funds to finance infrastructure investment received an airing at the Melbourne Financial Services Symposium yesterday.Brendan Lyon, chief executive of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, said there was "a very high level of expectation of the delivery of projects" by the public and governments."The capacity and quality of infrastructure services is not up to scratch."Lyon said major projects in the pipeline, and in need of funding, included the East-West road link in Melbourne, the Westconnex road link in Sydney and the Cross River rail project in Brisbane, as well as the renewal of rail rolling-stock in many states.He said the replacement of "post-World War II hospital stock and the re-design of major tertiary and clinical hospitals" were also priorities."The interest for super funds is the [in] ability of governments to support and finance them. They've got very little room under ratings' metrics."It's forcing them to look at privatising generators and distributors in New South Wales and Queensland. "There are some very big assets coming to market in the brownfield sense. We are seeing an accelerated pipeline of brownfield and greenfield projects. Every rational option to fund these [by government] has been ruled out, forcing policy-makers to look at recycling capital and putting projects out to market."Syd Bone, executive director of specialist infrastructure investor CP2, said superannuation funds needed to build more skilled internal teams to bid for these assets and to develop the capability to bid directly rather than through other funds.Ian Greer, managing director for infrastructure ratings for Standard & Poor's said that funding projects in the short term from banks was "still a problem for the market", with there being a "mismatch and refinancing risk.""We really need the bond market to come back."Darrin Grimsey, a partner with Ernst & Young, said the return on the equity on the mostly social infrastructure projects reviewed by his firm remained stable, at around 10 to 15 per cent.Ross Jones, deputy chair of APRA, said: "I hear from people that APRA, supposedly, is opposed to superannuation funds investing in infrastructure. I'm not opposed. It looks the perfect investment. lt's a long-term investment. APRA's focus is away from the short term."We'd probably be happier with brownfield investments. There's a greater certainty of the nature of the demand for the thing."