The first Australian Infrastructure Plan highlights the infrastructure bottlenecks and priorities that need to be tackled by the nation but a successful response to this challenge will be dependent on the appetite of Australians to support action said the Tourism & Transport Forum Australia (TTF).

“Infrastructure Australia has thrown down the gauntlet on meeting the nation’s infrastructure backlog, now it is up to Australians to support the actions necessary to make it a reality,” said Margy Osmond, TTF CEO.

“Speak to any Australian in our major cities or regional centres and they will happily tell you what they think we need to build or improve to make our country more productive and reduce congestion – there is no reluctance to highlight the problem but will we be willing to embrace the solutions?

“We’ve been debating our nation’s infrastructure challenge for many years now and we don’t appear to be growing any closer to a resolution – just a larger and larger list of what we want to build but what we just cannot afford to deliver in the timeframe we want.

“We need to embrace a willingness to make the tough decisions about how we actually deliver the funding and pipeline to actually start to tick off the projects that Infrastructure Australia says are the priority to improving our quality of life and taking the pressure off the hip pocket of Australians.

“Abandoning ideological opposition to innovative funding solutions such as asset recycling, value capture and a whole host of other new approaches is the only way that we will make inroads to building the economy-enhancing infrastructure we need.

“If we aren’t prepared to think outside the box and embrace innovation and a new approach to building infrastructure then we need to be prepared to live in congested cities that are only becoming more expensive because we won’t take action.”