The Hon Anthony Albanese
The Hon Anthony Albanese
Key points: • • •
there is a need for real leadership and bipartisanship to overcome infrastructure challenges and decide on a national energy policy infrastructure funding is declining while off-budget investment is increasing, but grant funding cannot be substituted with innovative financing arrangements, and Labor is focused on reforming Infrastructure Australia and placing city policy at the centre of government.
Let me begin with a quote: ‘Infrastructure Partnerships Australia … has been fundamentally about using information and data to better inform the national infrastructure debate, allowing the sector and wider community to better discern infrastructure fact from fiction.’ Those were the words of someone who is very familiar to us: Brendan Lyon. In his decade at the helm of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, Brendan took a nascent industry body and transformed it into one of Australia’s most respected and effective public policy organisations. Under the leadership of Brendan, and Adrian Dwyer, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia has more than fulfilled the mission expressed in the quote I opened with. In doing that, it has highlighted the virtues of stable leadership. Federal
94
futurebuilding
politics could take a leaf out of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia’s book. Consider this: during Brendan’s 10-year tenure as CEO, there were six Prime Ministers. And Adrian, who has only been in the role for a short period of time, is already onto his second Prime Minister and second Infrastructure Minister. While the comings and goings in Canberra have not been good for the nation’s body politic, the stability at the top of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia has been a key to its success. This stability has enabled the organisation to recruit a professional, dedicated staff and to develop a strong policy platform and an extensive body of research and build trusting relationships both within the sector, and within the corridors of power around the country.
