If Australia doesn't sell what it can to take advantage of the Asian boom century, someone else will, the federal trade minister has warned.
The Northern Australia Investment Forum ended in Darwin on Tuesday, after hosting more than 250 investors from 20 countries.
More than 100 projects across northern Australia were showcased for investors "with multi-billion dollar chequebooks", Trade Minister Andrew Robb said, but which of them will come to fruition remains to be seen.
Mr Robb said Australia needed to demonstrate the breadth of projects available for interested investors, particularly in Asia, which will continue to grow for decades to come.
"We've got to sell what we've got here; there are other people who will take advantage of what's going on in Asia if we don't step into the breach," he told reporters.
Mr Robb and Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles were reluctant to point out any specific successful projects, saying only that investors had advanced discussions on seven or eight of them.
Mr Giles said his government was looking for proponents to build a five or six-star hotel development in the Top End, as well as for ecotourism projects, and is continuing to work on economic modelling for a rail link between Tennant Creek and Mount Isa in Queensland.
Mr Robb said securing investments would take time.
"This wasn't a forum of Mickey Mouse investors, this was a forum of some of the most senior and biggest conglomerates, certainly within the Asian region; they're looking to invest billions of dollars," he said.
"That sort of deal obviously can take a long time to finally consummate, but our objective was to just provide an awareness of the sheer scale of what is in prospect right across northern Australia."
