Good morning everyone, 

Thank you, David for that introduction and thank you to IPWEA for the invitation to join you all today. 

I would like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we are all gathered today, the Gadigal people, and I pay my respects to their Elders—past and present. 

It's a privilege to join you today at the International Public Works Conference and I am especially pleased to be speaking on this year’s theme "Shaping Tomorrow's World” as we stand at a decisive moment for Australia’s infrastructure future.  

Our collective challenge is not only to build for today, but to ensure the assets we create, maintain, and renew are fit for tomorrow’s challenges—especially as we confront climate change and the transition toward net zero. 

We confront these challenges in an infrastructure market where the demand to build far exceeds the resources available to deliver. 

Each year, at the request of the Prime Minister, Premiers and Chief Ministers across the nation, Infrastructure Australia evaluates the demand to build across each jurisdiction, and using our unique model, reports on the resources required to deliver on that demand.  

What our Market Capacity report has shown year after year is that the nation’s infrastructure ambitions continue to be challenged by skills shortages, stagnant productivity growth, and rising material costs. 

Construction materials on average cost around 30 per cent more than they did three years ago and with ongoing skills shortages we simply don’t have the people power we need to get the job done on time. 

In the face of these shortages, we need to do more with less. And we need to work smarter – not just in the delivery of infrastructure, but in our approach to infrastructure resilience, maintenance and management. 

The reality is stark: we don’t have the people or the materials to rebuild the same road three times over when it is washed away. In fact, we’re struggling to build it once. 

Take, for example, Waterfall Way between Coffs Harbour and Armidale. 

Over the past decade, this vital corridor has been repeatedly washed away—time and again—by floods.  

Each time, we rebuild to the same standard. Each time, we hope for a different result. But the truth is, as the saying goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. 

The cost of doing nothing—or more accurately, the cost of doing the same thing repeatedly—is immense.  

Over the last ten years, flooding events across Australia have resulted in billions of dollars in insurance payouts, not to mention the untold toll on affected communities and the disruption to our economy. 

Disruption is increasing in scale and complexity, with annual disaster costs projected to double to $39.3B by 2050. 

If governments fail to invest in better planning for resilience—by maintaining, renewing, and upgrading assets with climate change in mind—they inevitably spend far more on replacements after disaster strikes.  

Waterfall Way is just one example—a microcosm of what’s at stake nationally. 

In line with this, in our 2024 Annual Budget Statement, Infrastructure Australia recommended the Federal Government give greater focus to funding maintenance and renewal of existing infrastructure assets alongside potential new investments.   

In a cost constrained environment, optimising current assets and networks can be more efficient and cost-effective than constructing new expensive, long-lived assets that add to asset portfolios and increase pressure on the market’s capacity to deliver.  

This recognises the growing challenges of ageing assets, maintenance liabilities, infrastructure resilience and the need for a more sustainable funding mix. 

When we do deliver new infrastructure a critical piece of the puzzle, alongside planning for resilience of existing infrastructure, is to build new assets with decarbonisation not just in mind, but front and centre. 

Infrastructure and buildings are responsible for almost a third of Australia’s emissions and indirectly responsible for over half, meaning they will play a critical role in the country’s journey to net zero.   

What we’ve found is that the best way to decarbonise infrastructure is to design as much carbon out of the asset, from the beginning. 

But what we’ve found through research that we’ve launched today is that only about half of the workforce currently engaged in the delivery of Australia’s major public infrastructure pipeline is skilled in decarbonisation – the Infrastructure Net Zero workforce. 

The Delivering Net Zero Infrastructure: Workforce Report demonstrates that more can be done to engage the rest, so we have workers right across the project lifecycle with the skills, and importantly confidence, to drive the decarbonisation of infrastructure projects. 

We’ve undertaken this work in collaboration with, and with the support of, our Infrastructure Net Zero Initiative colleagues – a coalition of state and territory infrastructure bodies (such as iSA, iVIC, INSW, Jobs and Skills Australia, Govt Departments), industry groups (such as ARA, Consult Australia, ASBEC) and others.  

This report is not only a unified effort by government and industry to identify the workforce we already have that are capable to reduce emissions, but also a snapshot of what needs to be done to help it grow and upskill.  

The report’s key recommendation calls for governments, industry and educators to develop a new industry-wide training program to set the national standard for skills needed to decarbonise projects.  

And governments and industry bodies are already rallying behind the recommendations as they recognise that workers need to be armed with the skills and confidence to do the job today, tomorrow and in a Net Zero future. 

The challenges before us—whether they be skills shortages, rising costs, ageing assets or the urgent need to decarbonise—demand a unified and pragmatic response. 

By strengthening partnerships between government, industry, educators, and communities, we can ensure Australia’s infrastructure is not only fit for purpose today but also resilient and sustainable for future generations. 

Thank you.