WHEN Anthony Albanese set up Infrastructure Australia in 2008 he made it his personal lapdog, largely answerable to him.
IA was sidelined on any real decision-making, forced to play catch-up and chase its tail to justify projects Labor had already announced without consulting its expert advisory body.
Labor’s road and rail funding projects, its big-spending response to the global financial crisis, its infrastructure election promises, were all announced without being fully assessed by IA.
Headline projects such as Darwin Port, Sydney’s West Metro and Adelaide’s O-Bahn had to be scrapped when assessed in the light of day.
Albanese never asked IA to investigate Labor’s biggest ever infrastructure project, the $70 billion NBN fiacso.
IA worked diligently assessing which projects from state and territory lists had the most advanced business cases - not which were the best projects - all after the government had already decided which projects would be built.
Labor’s IA was neither independent nor transparent and it played no significant role in guiding government decision-making. That’s why change is needed. The Liberal-National government is now moving to enshrine certainty, transparency, focus and a national purpose in infrastructure planning, development and delivery.
These are precisely the factors that will build confidence, attract investment and encourage innovation and strategic planning to deliver Australia from an infrastructure deficit that nobbles our productivity and growth.
The changes upon which Albanese rains such bluster and bile, will, for the first time, give IA an independent board with a chief executive officer answerable to the board. IA will be separated from the department and will control its own budget and work program, making it truly independent.
In more firsts, IA will be charged with developing a rolling 15-year infrastructure plan for Australia. IA will be ahead of the game, not trying to catch up after decisions have already been made. It will also undertake five-yearly evidence-based audits of Australia’s infrastructure assets, developing top-down priority lists at national and state levels, and evaluate both economic and social infrastructure proposals over $100 million in value, which seek commonwealth funding. Their work will go beyond transport and include all commonwealth projects, except Defence.
IA will also be required, by legislation, to publish the justification for prioritising projects, including benefit-costs analysis.
This will give planning certainty to industry and ensure public funding is used to deliver the infrastructure projects our nation needs most, when we need them.
I acknowledge Albanese’s role in establishing IA but his model has not worked. I am disappointed he now seems to be determined that no one else should make it better.
Under Albanese, IA was not given the leeway to achieve its purpose of fundamentally changing the way projects are identified as national priorities. That is why our reform policy was so welcomed by industry groups when it was announced before the election.
The Coalition is united in its goal to be an infrastructure government. We are putting in place the foundations on which to build our infrastructure of the future.
IA’s role is pivotal in our strategy to lift Australia’s productivity. IA needs to be more than a post box for unfunded projects or a commentator on decisions already made.
We maintain that IA should take a more proactive role in identifying our infrastructure needs at a national level.
Our reforms will give IA the ability to focus its efforts on the national infrastructure task and advise governments on what Australia needs to unshackle constrained economic productivity.
The government will also charge IA with examining crucial and pressing policy issues, recognising that projects or initiatives do not necessarily stand in isolation. This is crucial for rural and regional projects that may not have a direct link to national productivity, but are vital to those communities.
We have set in motion a new and more focused way forward for IA to determine its own destiny and provide the advice that governments need ... not just what they want.
A clearly articulated plan will assist both the public and private sectors to deliver projects, including co-ordination of the investment, skills and resources required.
With the chorus of support for strengthening IA so loud and clear, Albanese may as well be talking to the passing traffic. It may not have sunk in yet, but voters, industry and, now, IA are leaving his whims and Labor’s failures behind. The new government is getting on with important reforms to get our infrastructure priorities identified well ahead of time and aligned with our national infrastructure needs.
Warren Truss is Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development.
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