Acting Prime Minister Warren Truss has suggested Queensland follow the lead of New South Wales, which has offered 99-year leases on ports to raise billions of dollars for infrastructure projects.
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Mr Truss inspected progress on Brisbane's Legacy Way tunnel on Wednesday morning, including the plans for the first expansion of the Mt Coot-tha Botanical Gardens in 40 years.
The federal government is contributing $500 million - committed by the Gillard government and maintained by the Abbott government - to the $1.5 billion Legacy Way tunnel.
In May 2013, NSW Treasurer Mike Baird said a 99-year leases of state ports would result in a net $4 billion for a new infrastructure fund called Restart NSW.
Mr Truss said on Wednesday it was too early to discuss an actual funding package for Brisbane's $5 billion Bus and Train Tunnel, which would connect to the Legacy Way tunnel.
"The Treasurer has had contact and discussions with his state colleagues and we have put on the table the idea that we would be prepared to facilitate state governments that want to recycle assets and build new ones," he said.
"But the detail about which projects, and when and how, hasn't even been canvassed yet."
Queensland Premier Campbell Newman last week said Queensland intended to apply for BaT tunnel funding under the policy.
The Queensland government has already identified the Bundaberg, Townsville and Gladstone ports, the Mt Isa railway line, the retail arm of Ergon, Sunwater's industrial section and electricity generators CS Energy and Stanwell for possible sale or long-term lease.
Critics of asset sales argue their state-owned assets provide ongoing revenue for state governments, job security and can only be sold or leased once.
Mr Truss said Treasurer Joe Hockey's "recycled capital" formula offered an opportunity to change the direction of some costs now being incurred by state governments considering privatisation.
"So this is an attempt to correct some financial disadvantages that might arise from a state if they choose to privatise assets, while at the same time trying to recycle capital," he said.
Mr Truss said Queensland should look to how NSW had used its ports.
"They have sold the Port of Botany and they have raised a lot of money from that which is now being put into road systems," he said.
"They're interested in selling the Port of Newcastle and that is be used to revitalise the central city of Newcastle."
Money from the NSW ports lease goes to "seed funding" for the $11 billion, $33 kilometre Westconnex Motorway in western Sydney and to 15 new bridges around NSW.
Mr Truss said superannuation funds were interested in specific forms of infrastructure.
"Where you have a brownfield site, where you have patronage details, the superannuation funds, the investors are very keen to be involved," he said.
"It is much harder to get them to invest in a greenfield site where there is no patronage history.
"So this links together the confidence that investors want with a secure asset and allows a new asset to be built."
Damian Frawley, chief executive of the state government-owned Queensland Investment Corporation, on Tuesday also pointed to the NSW "recycling capital" exercise.
"(Mike) Baird has prosecuted this argument successfully because the people of New South Wales can touch and feel a tangible and highly-valued infrastructure outcome, which will make their lives easier," he said.
