Page 1569 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 2 June 2021
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$14 billion, and covering areas as diverse as health, education, transport and community services.
As I said when I launched the plan in October 2019, the government’s goal was to take a longer term view of our community’s infrastructure needs—to map out a program beyond a single parliamentary term and to look at the physical, social and digital infrastructure necessary to meet those medium and longer term community needs.
We do this because good infrastructure supports a productive economy—but it can do much more than that. Infrastructure that is well planned and thoughtfully delivered improves people’s quality of life, strengthens effective service delivery, supports adaptation to a changing climate, and breaks down barriers to social inclusion. Strategically investing in infrastructure that improves wellbeing and supports economic growth is a key element of the government’s fiscal strategy.
The Infrastructure Plan outlines priority infrastructure projects, like the Canberra Hospital expansion, which will create 500 jobs during the construction phase and contribute to our commitment to employ 400 new healthcare professionals in this parliamentary term. It outlines our aim to build and expand schools across Canberra’s suburbs, and to invest in vocational training and education through the new CIT Woden campus. It outlines the process of extending public transport infrastructure in the territory, through the next phase of the light rail network, initially to Commonwealth Park, then on to Woden.
The Infrastructure Plan’s key objective, to provide the ACT community, construction sector and business with confidence in the focus and a clear pipeline of ACT government infrastructure projects, has proven to be incredibly valuable over the past two years.
We need to acknowledge that, since the release of the plan in 2019, the world has shifted significantly. The COVID pandemic has devastated global economies and, at its peak, led to a sharp spike in national and global unemployment. Having a clear infrastructure plan already laid out allowed the ACT to move quickly to reconfirm major projects and to fast-track the rollout of a number of smaller, shovel-ready or screwdriver-ready projects. I am pleased to be able to advise the Assembly that having that pipeline of projects—small, medium and large—has saved, directly, thousands of jobs, those directly associated with the construction of those infrastructure projects, and many ancillary jobs in the ACT economy through the worst economic downturn that many Canberrans have experienced in their lifetimes.
Over the past two years we have seen even greater community awareness of the climate emergency that we face. The ACT has acted on the urgent need to build the renewable infrastructure necessary to get cities and economic sectors to zero emissions as soon as possible, whilst also ensuring that vulnerable members of our community are not disadvantaged by this rapid change.
The territory has always been a national leader on climate action, and we continue to take the leading role in our nation, and certainly in our region. In October, we took an
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