Back in July, outgoing Infrastructure Australia (IA) CEO, Philip Davies, lambasted Australia’s governments for wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on spurious infrastructure projects, noting that none had adhered to “best-practice”:
Mr Davies… slated successive governments for “gold-plating” infrastructure projects without sound business cases and being unaccountable to taxpayers on costs…
Mr Davies said if planning for major projects did not change at all levels of government, the major capitals would not cope with the population growth.
“An additional 11.8 million people will call Australia home in the next 30 years, with the bulk of this growth occurring in our largest cities — Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth,” Mr Davies said.
“The reality is, if we don’t improve the way we plan and deliver our infrastructure, we won’t cope with this growth and our cities will be characterised by congestion and constraint.
…“There are few more dangerous places to stand than between a politician and an infrastructure announcement,” Mr Davies writes in The Australian today.
…When asked if he could cite a project that had stacked up to the 11 principles outlined in the document to be published today, Mr Davies said to date there had been none that had adhered to the best-practice model.
With this criticism in mind, 9News reports that former Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, had signed-off on $7.6 billion in pre-election infrastructure pork:
Malcolm Turnbull approved an $8 billion road and rail package to be rolled out across marginal seats as part of his re-election campaign.
The blueprint, leaked overnight, included a high speed rail link between Brisbane and Melbourne, and a north-south link in western Sydney.
Labor’s shadow minister, Anthony Albanese, said the leak showed the “on-going war between the Abbott and Dutton forces and Turnbull, Morrison forces just continues”.
“The only way to stamp it out is to go to an election,” Mr Albanese said.
The above is a prime example of Philip Davies’ concerns and highlights, yet again, why Australia’s cities “won’t cope with this [population] growth and our cities will be characterised by congestion and constraint”.
