Infrastructure Australia Chief Executive Adam Copp 

Thursday, 5 June 2025  

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Good morning, everyone.  

I start by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we are all gathered today—the Jagera people and the Turrbal people of Meanjin.  

In doing so, I pay my respects to their Elders—past and present.  

I also extend that respect to all First Nations people here today.  

Thank you to Tracy for hosting this morning’s event, and inviting me to speak.  

I would like to pay my respects to the many distinguished people here in the room today, including Graham Fraine, Director-General of the Department of Natural Resources and Mines, Manufacturing and Regional and Rural Development who you will hear from soon.  

*** 

Today’s topic–covering resources, our regions and decarbonisation–reminded me of this poster that is in the Queensland State Library’s collection.  

It is a vivid and beautifully illustrated map drawn by Frank Jesson in the 1950s.  

Its title—Queensland: Her Natural, Agricultural, Pastoral and Mineral Resources.  

In this map, Jesson transforms Queensland’s topography into a triangle of riches.  

If you look closely, you can see tiny bags of gold, sheep grazing, carts of coal, and clouds of cotton.  

Wheat fields ripple, and sugar cane rises.  

Then there are red veins of railways, which are carrying the lifeblood of coal and crops to port for export.  

Queensland is a treasure chest—a state of vast wealth.  

The state’s resources have been the bedrock of prosperity and will continue to be an essential part of the state’s future.  

The infrastructure sector, and in particular the QLD infrastructure sector, will be calling on the products of the resources industry for many, many years.  

Not only does QLD have Australia’s fastest growing population, and a booming economy… it also has an Olympics to deliver, against a backdrop of national and state net zero targets.  

Delivering the infrastructure Queensland needs will need a scale of labour and materials – not seen in QLD’s history before.  

*** 

Before I get to explaining how big the task is, I want to talk briefly about who Infrastructure Australia is and what we do.   

We are the Australian Government’s independent expert adviser on nationally significant infrastructure.  

We provide this advice in two major ways.   

The first, is through project evaluation and advice.  

We provide a range of advice across the project life cycle for Commonwealth, but most famously we independently evaluate project proposals of national significance, when an Australian, state or territory government is seeking $250 million or more in Commonwealth funds.  

Given we are in Queensland, think projects like the Bruce Highway, Brisbane Metro or Gold Coast Light Rail.  

Since 2016, our agency has evaluated more than 105 nationally significant projects relating to more than $400b of infrastructure.   

The second way we provide advice is through our policy and research work where we look to support better decision-making, planning, and prioritisation for the infrastructure sector.  

This includes our flagship, unique in the world, Market Capacity Report which I will talk to now.  

*** 

Market capacity is an annually updated forward pipeline of Australia’s construction sector. Based on the data shared by States and Territories and augmented by private sector data, it provides a national view of the majority of construction demand in Australia.  

That demand is then run through our model to give the Plant, Labour, Equipment and Material needed to deliver on that demand.  

Looking nationally, our latest Market Capacity Report captures over $1 trillion of construction activity across Australia.  

Through the data we captured, we can see the nation’s five-year Major Public Infrastructure Pipeline (projects over $100m) stands at $213 billion.  

While this is an 8 per cent decline from the previous year’s outlook, demand to build is still high.  

Looking at the make-up of the pipeline, investment in transport projects stands at $126 billion—the lion’s share of investment.  

Although, investment in transport has come down on the past 12 months by $32 billion.  

While this drop has happened, investment in buildings and utilities projects has increased—largely driven by demand for housing, healthcare, and renewable energy.  

In fact, we see these project types have increased to $71 billion for buildings and $16 billion for utilities.  

Looking at renewable energy more closely, our analysis shows there will be a six-fold increase in renewable energy projects across all construction activity in Australia over the next five years.  

What these trends in investment tells us is that while transport is still a major focus for governments, they are starting to turn their attention to meeting their housing and renewable energy agendas.  

We are also seeing a change in where investment is going.  

In particular, we are seeing investment drop by $39 billion across Victoria and NSW, but grow significantly in the country’s north.  

Included in the north is Queensland, where the state’s total Major Public Infrastructure Pipeline investments has grown $11.6 billion over the last 12 months to $37.4 billion.  

As we look at developing our next 2025 Market Capacity Report, we will see how Queensland’s ambitions have evolved as it seeks to deliver the 2032 Olympics and major infrastructure projects such as The Wave.  

*** 

In order to deliver on this demand, we need resources. 

Resources that, much like Frank Jesson’s map, are finite.  

Thinking back to that map of Queensland, there is a glaring resource omission—people. 

Human capital powers infrastructure design and delivery.  

Our Market Capacity Report shows Australia is missing half the workforce we need to deliver on the pipeline—197,000 workers. 

Demand for workers is shifting from our cities to our regions, and from southern states to the country’s north.  

Looking at the demand for labour in Queensland today, the state needs approximately 85,000 workers to deliver on the public pipeline of infrastructure projects. 

But, as is the case for the rest of the country, QLD is missing just over half of those workers, with our forecasts projecting that the state is nearly 43,000 short as of June this year. 

However, skills shortages aren’t always going to be evenly felt. 

For instance, you will see the three regions highlighted in the map on the screen.  

These regions include Wide Bay, Central Queensland, and Mackay—Isaac—Whitsunday.  

At the moment, the demand for workers in these regions today stands at 12,600.  

Now if we fast forward to 2027—our forecasts show that due to increased demand in infrastructure projects, the total number of workers needed across these three regions will grow to a peak of 38,500.  

Material costs also continue to remain high having increased on average 4.3 per cent on the past 12 months.  

This is admittedly a slower rate of growth than previous years.  

However, materials are on average 30 per cent higher than they were three years ago.  

Looking at the graph on the screen, this is the national demand for materials to deliver each project type in the five-year Major Public Infrastructure Pipeline.  

As you can see, of the materials most in demand, concrete is the big one, (137 million tonnes of concrete will be needed across all project types), followed by rock/bluestone (31 million tonnes), asphalt (18 million tonnes), and steel (8 million tonnes).  

In Queensland, the total demand for concrete—which includes aggregate, cement, and sand—over the five years is 19.9 million tonnes, and over 1.5 million tonnes of steel. 

These are big numbers and an enormous challenge to come to grips with to deliver on Queensland’s infrastructure ambitions.  

We will need to focus on developing new sources of supply of workers and materials, review our logistics and supply chains and look closely at how we can deliver infrastructure in the most productive way possible.  

The challenges of the infrastructure sector aren’t limited to the availability and demand for workers, materials or their costs. 

*** 

The infrastructure sector needs to also decarbonise in order for Australia to meet its Net Zero commitments.  

Despite it being an enormous challenge, there is plenty of good news on decarbonisation.  

The Queensland Government, like the Australian Government and every other state and territory, is committed to Net Zero by 2050.  

And progress is being made. 

As announced by the country’s Climate Change and Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, Australia's emissions for the year to December 2024 are estimated to be 27 per cent below 2005 levels. 

Queensland has played its part too, having exceeded its first interim emission reduction target of 30 per cent by 2030. 

The state is currently sitting at 35 per cent below 2005 levels. 

The Sydney 2000 Olympics, dubbed the world’s first ‘Green Games’, was a catalytic event to usher in a new era of sustainable development.  

Stadium Australia, the largest Olympic stadium of its time, set new benchmarks for eco-efficient design.  

Sydney Olympic Park launched Australia’s first large-scale urban water recycling scheme.  

The athletes’ village at Newington became the world’s largest solar-powered suburb.  

And the Games became the launching pad for the Green Building Council of Australia and the Green Star rating system.  

Now, as the world’s eyes turn to Brisbane in 2032, Queensland can take the baton and race to redefine sustainable infrastructure for the 21st century.  

Queensland’s leadership opportunity is clear. 

But there is a mountain of work ahead right across the country.  

We will use over 192 million tonnes of construction materials over the next five years.  

And the country and indeed Queensland will need to rapidly open mines and quarries in order to meet that demand.  

While I note the Queensland Government has been very successful in streamlining approval times for mines, it can take years from approval for a mine to start producing resources to be used for projects.  

When demand is so high to build and projects need to be built right now, we need to make sure we can and are looking at all options on the table. 

One option that has sat on the very edge of the table, is leveraging the circular economy.  

Right now, Australia’s circularity rate is just 4.6 per cent.  

The global average is 7.2 per cent, according to the 2024 National Circular Economy Framework. 

Australians discard nearly 76 million tonnes of waste every year—most of that ends up as landfill.  

The built environment is the biggest culprit, generating 29 megatonnes of waste in FY22 alone. 

This here is an opportunity for us to meet current resource demand, while new mines and quarries are approved and move into operation. 

As an example of how this could work, our 2022 Replacement Materials Report estimates that 27 per cent of conventional material tonnage needed to deliver road projects – roughly 54 million tonnes – could be replaced with recycled materials.  

Queensland can use its infrastructure boom to lead the way.  

The rewards are significant—fewer emissions, less waste to landfill, a more resilient supply chain, new industries. 

And a much longer life for our natural resources. 

We can redraw the state’s map, so resources are extracted, then reused and renewed. 

A map that brings together natural capital, human capital and economic resources to create value that doesn’t just flow in straight lines, but in circles. 

If we do that, the beauty of maps like Jesson’s will continue to remain for generations to come. 

Thank you.