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Highlights
- The 2021 Australian Infrastructure Plan provides a 15-year roadmap to deliver infrastructure for a stronger Australia.
- The plan intends to fully leverage the Australian Government’s AU$110 billion infrastructure spend.
- The plan focuses on aiding growth in regional centres, digitisation, sustainability, and other key fields.
Infrastructure Australia recently introduced a plan to overhaul and improve the country’s infrastructure, focusing on aiding the national recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The plan intends to fully leverage the Australian Government’s historic AU$110 billion infrastructure spend.
The 2021 Australian Infrastructure Plan provides a 15-year roadmap, driving economic growth and enhancing Aussies’ standard of living while uplifting infrastructure’s resilience and sustainability.
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The plan provides a reform pathway for responding to the 180 infrastructure challenges and opportunities identified in Infrastructure Australia’s 2019 audit.
It is intended to deliver infrastructure for a stronger Australia while bolstering national recovery from the ongoing turbulence induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. The plan also intends to build better resilience against bushfires, floods, drought, and cyber-attack, affecting Australia’s growth.
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The key focus of the 2021 Infrastructure Plan
The 2021 Plan has identified the four main groups of stakeholders – Infrastructure Australia, governments, industry, individuals and the community - responsible for implementing the reforms. Moreover, more than half of the total reform effort is within the remit of the Australian Government.
Each reform focuses on community and user outcomes and balances them with costs of implementation and risks associated.
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Place-based outcomes for communities - The reform intends to unlock the potential of every location by focusing on their specific needs. Thus, it is oriented towards rethinking fast-growing cities, strengthening smaller cities and regional centres, and lifting access in small towns, rural communities, and remote areas.
Sustainability and resilience - This covers infrastructure planning for an uncertain future, ensuring technology-led sustainability, focusing on transparency and collaboration to build trust in decisions.
Industry productivity and innovation - It is aimed to be achieved through improving planning, portfolios, and pipelines while enhancing project outcomes. It also intends to embrace an evidence-based digital by default approach and work towards next-generation infrastructure investment.
Source: Copyright © 2021 Kalkine Media Pty Ltd.
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Transport - It involves maximising the benefits of transport investment, connecting remote and regional Australia, improving the management of urban transport services, and ensuring a fairer price for mobility.
Water - The reform revolves around securing water future and valuing water to create liveable communities.
Telecommunications and digital - The reform in this area is planned to be achieved by improving telecommunications’ resilience, putting customers at the heart of digital infrastructure, and enabling Australia’s digital future.
Social infrastructure – This area is to be enhanced through facilitating targeted investment, supporting the shared use of social infrastructure to maximise support to social and economic community benefits, and recognising the value of the investment in social infrastructure.
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Waste - Involves valuing resources to enable a circular economy and focusing on implementing the National Waste Strategy.
Source: Copyright © 2021 Kalkine Media Pty Ltd.
Bottom Line
The vision for 2036 laid down by Infrastructure Australia is to improve the sustainability of Australia’s economic, social, environmental, and governance settings, which are resilient to shocks and emerging stresses to create a quality of life for all Australians.
