As Mr Swan puts the finishing touches on tomorrow's Federal Budget, business is salivating about the promised focus on infrastructure, which it says has long been neglected.

A centrepiece of the Treasurer's budget speech will be details of the Building Australia Fund, a long-held Labor policy it is keen to nurture, and to which it is expected to direct the lion's share of what is tipped to be a record budget surplus above $17 billion.

Investment earnings from the Government's Future Fund are expected to be pumped into the Building Australia Fund.

A report this month by ABN Amro predicted Australia will need to spend at least $380 billion on infrastructure over the next decade.

Mark Birrell, chairman of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, said there was an expectation that infrastructure would get a significant boost to fund critical water, rail, road and urban transport needs.

"There's is an optimism in the business community that this will be an important budget for infrastructure because there is such an interest in dealing with the extensive backlog and individual projects that business concedes is of immediate importance," he said.

Measures to cut statutory and regulatory obstacles in delivering infrastructure are also needed in the budget to assist with the national roll-out, Mr Birrell said.

"We will also be looking in the budget for the emergence of the infrastructure markets that we need to see, the national energy market and the national water market … (along with) details of how the fund will work with other funds, like the higher education fund, and whether they will be drawn together," he said.

Minter Ellison partner Peter Block said the Building Australia Fund would have to work closely with the peak advisory group, Infrastructure Australia.

"You need to link them together to ensure the process works efficiently," he said.

"If I were a policymaker I would set aside the money from the fund to address the infrastructure needs identified by Infrastructure Australia and cross them off, one, two, three, four …"

Mr Birrell said Infrastructure Australia and the Building Australia Fund should ignore state borders when prioritising where the money should be spent.

However, he said the running of the fund needed to be transparent to avoid the temptation of pork barrelling.

"There is little sympathy for parochialism and a lot of interest in getting up projects that cross boundaries or water catchments," he said.

"They are not interested in fighting old battles across jurisdictional lines.

"The big projects that need to be addressed and are long overdue do cross boundaries.

"For example, it is still hard to believe we still do not have a four-lane highway linking our three major capital cities."

Mr Block said it was inevitable that most of Australia's infrastructure needs would be met through the private sector and by way of public-private partnerships.

"The amount of infrastructure that needs to be done is going to be more than what they will have in the fund, so you can see the importance of private investment," he said.

* http://www.infrastructure.org.au