Is there anything more boring in the realms of public spending than infrastructure?
Infrastructure spending does nothing to increase teacher salaries or accelerate elective surgery.
According to the Infrastructure Partnerships ‘Budget Monitor’, state and federal governments across Australia will spend $256.6 billion on infrastructure projects ranging from roads and Sydney’s Western Airport to sewage and water infrastructure.
Their report notes an increasing focus on energy infrastructure to help the renewables transition.
This is all sunny news. So after last year’s budget announcements, everyone returned to focusing on salaries and interest rates.
But since then, dark clouds have started forming – the Albanese Labor government received a report on the Commonwealth government’s infrastructure $120 billion pipeline, which identified an eye-watering $44 billion in cost blow-outs. It recommended 100 projects continue, while dumping 82 planned projects. Many of these projects affect Western Sydney, so the NSW government has had to somehow find the money to make up the shortfall in projects like the motorway connections to Western Sydney’s new airport.
For most citizens, it’s eye-glazing – the size of the cost and the scale of the projects is tremendous.
Sydney projects impact us
What most of us fail to appreciate is the impact the cost blow-out has on each and every household in the Northern Rivers, where we are still trying to rebuild infrastructure post-flood, and have yet to solve issues such as water security and local roads.
The infrastructure debacle, which saw the federal government forced to find $44 billion for cost blow-outs was a national disgrace, and frankly, it is fortunate for the infrastructure tsars and contractors that most of this happened on the former government’s watch.
Subsequently, their scandalous mismanagement has gone under everybody’s radar.
Ad hoc planning
According to reports, this fiasco is owing to ‘ad hoc planning’, and a failure to properly plan and cost projects prior to committing to fund them.
When big projects in places like Sydney and Melbourne blow out to the tune of $44 billion, every single rural and regional community carries the burden – funding for the Bruxner Highway between Wollongbar and Lismore was just one of the 82 projects axed.
Around the same time, Royal Life Saving Australia released a report on the state of the nation’s aquatic infrastructure. It found the average public swimming pool was built in 1968, and 40 per cent (or 500 swimming pools), will reach the end of their life by 2030. They will cost $8 billion to replace. And a further $3 billion will be needed on public pools through to 2035.
Unlike the federal infrastructure debacle, there are no state or federal programs for funding public pools – the cost and responsibility falls onto local government.
Smaller councils are already overwhelmed with significant backlogs. There is no way our councils can take on such costs. Losing public pools would strike at the very heart of Australian culture.
Swimming pools are just one relatively small issue councils face – local roads obviously are the biggest.
Drainage is another council responsibility. Whether you live in Lismore or Byron, many homes and businesses around our region will continue to flood unnecessarily, because we still lack funding for proper drainage.
Issues like water supply and sewerage should be handed over to, and funded and managed by state government because it can never be solved locally. We desperately need our own version of Sydney Water, and it needs to be big – encompassing the entire region.
A third issue raised by infrastructure partnerships is a catch-22 – big city projects are placing a huge strain on the construction labour force, causing the cost of building to blow out. And this is competing with labour we need to be building houses.
In May 2023, a KPMG report estimated the cost of residential construction increased by 30 per cent over two years, causing thousands of plans for new homes to be torn up.
Everyone needs to care about what is going on with infrastructure in Australia – it’s a policy minefield that seems utterly neglected owing to lack of political sex appeal.
But the dysfunction and mismanagement affects each of us more than any other aspect of government spending.
And its impact on our children and their future is far greater.
Our councils are overwhelmed to the point where we need to hit a pause button, band together and ask for a ‘new deal’ for Northern Rivers infrastructure planning and funding. My dream is that The Northern Rivers Joint Organisation (NRJO) can lead and tackle this project and support its member councils.
We are not even back on our feet from the floods – let alone investing in a big picture plan for our future.
We all need to wake up to infrastructure and make it the number one priority that it is.
♦ Catherine Cusack is a former NSW Liberal MP.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
