By Catherine Carter
CHIEF Minister Jon Stanhope has announced an important initiative to develop a plan to set longer-term infrastructure priorities for the Territory.
Infrastructure is a critical issue for government at all levels across Australia. Not only does it represent a substantial share of the economy, but it also plays an essential role in supporting nearly all aspects of a society’s operation.
In past years, the Commonwealth Government invested significant funds to provide high-quality infrastructure assets in the ACT. Since the advent of self-government in 1989, relatively little has been spent on maintenance or on the provision of new infrastructure, resulting in the degradation of existing assets and gaps in critical infrastructure needed to enable the nation’s capital to thrive and grow.
While the ACT Government has recently announced a number of its own infrastructure projects, some of them big-ticket items, the ACT has not had an overarching infrastructure plan to provide a statutory framework to sustainably manage growth and change in the Territory. Any plan will also need to incorporate a high level of co-ordination between relevant Federal and Territory agencies. Without such a plan infrastructure development may simply go into a queue along with all other development approval applications for the Territory. This is likely to create an unwieldy bottleneck, slowing down the vital work of infrastructure renewal and improvement in the very capital city of the nation which has just announced a firm commitment to excellent and effective infrastructure.
The way in which infrastructure is funded is another important issue. There are strong intergenerational arguments to support government borrowing to deliver infrastructure up front and spread its cost across time. The ACT Government has the capacity to invest in infrastructure using government debt without impacting its AAA credit rating.
Mr Stanhope has said the infrastructure plan would be developed by the Chief Minister’s Department, supported by a steering committee comprising other agencies. An advisory group consisting of senior officials and community and industry representatives would advise the Government on necessary updates and progress towards achievement of the plan would be publicly reported. It is anticipated that the plan would be updated annually, which will allow it to remain flexible to emerging or unforeseen priorities.
The Opposition has been thinking about these issues for some time, too, also announcing earlier this year that they would develop an infrastructure plan for Canberra, supported by an advisory group. One way or the other, it is encouraging to see that this critical issue is clearly on the radar and the agenda of both major political parties.

Catherine Carter is executive director of the Property Council of Australia (ACT).