Engineers Australia supports today’s announcement that the Government will review its multibillion-dollar Infrastructure Investment Program to ensure projects of national value and significance can be delivered.
The review will also look at scrapping or clearing a backlog of delayed, unfunded projects.
Engineers Australia’s Romilly Madew AO says reviewing this pipeline will provide an opportunity to target investment to ensure best value for money is achieved.
“This is critical to helping ensure spending doesn’t further fuel current economic challenges.
“Australia’s construction sector is already at breaking point, rising materials costs and labour shortages has caused budgets to blow out and project slippage.
“Over the past two years, engineering vacancies have grown by 80 per cent nationally. A significant contributor to this increase is infrastructure projects.”
Ms Madew says infrastructure projects are mostly medium-to-long term endeavours, taking years to be completed, so a healthy pipeline of projects to support Australia’s future is vital.
“When reviewing the pipeline, it will be important to give due consideration to changing consumer behaviour and economic priorities.
“Fiscal policy needs to balance tackling the cost-of-living crisis currently being experienced with investment targeted to support changing societal needs.
“Any funding allocation should also match the importance of policy outcomes, such as sustainability and emissions reductions, rather than just individual projects,” Ms Madew said.
Beyond the economic and societal challenges facing the nation, population growth, space limitations, national net zero emissions targets and more prevalent and extreme natural disasters are major factors impacting Australia’s transport system.
Engineers Australia’s work is supporting the Government on tackling this. Investing in transport infrastructure based on past ways of delivering projects will not meet the needs of the future.
“Collaborative, long-term planning of infrastructure is vital to economic prosperity and the wellbeing of the community,” Ms Madew said.