Labor is promising to revamp the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility should it win the next federal election, describing it as a slush fund that is not working in the national interest in its present state.
Opposition finance spokesman Jim Chalmers will tell a Canberra conference on Thursday the poorly-designed facility has been in existence for two and a half years.
"There's been more than half-a-million dollars in executive salaries and travel perks for board members but not a single dollar for job-boosting infrastructure in Queensland," Dr Chalmers will tell the Australian National University's Crawford School.
He said it has been set up in a way that gives little confidence that there is sufficiently rigorous oversight or appropriate structures underneath it.
"This is why we've seen a political push from the relevant National Party minister to invest in a mining project that should be able to stand on its own two feet and a coal-fired power station that will take seven years to build and not solve our energy crisis."
Under a Shorten Labor government, the facility would operate under the dual ministerial governance of Resources and Northern Australia, and Finance.
Dr Chalmers said such a change would align it more closely with the governance and objectives of other investment funds, while bringing in the Department of Finance's experience and expertise, and give an "opportunity to do its work free of the sense it is there as a slush fund".
As the would-be finance minister, Dr Chalmers also wants to raise the profile of the portfolio given its whole-of-government status.
He said Treasury's role is well documented and understood, but the same can't be said for Finance, 41 years after they split.
The department does much of its work behind the scenes but its worth is often viewed through a narrow lens.
"Its minister (is) frequently caricatured as one who exists just to say no to colleagues' spending plans, fix internal problems and robotically recite the government's key messages."
