Barney Irvine: Northern Infrastructure Forum Executive Director discusses upcoming $6billion infrastructure projects

A suggestion has been put forward for more policy tweaks so infrastructure projects can be delivered in the long term.

$6billion of infrastructure will get off the ground between now and late December.  

Northern Infrastructure Forum Executive Director Barney Irvine says that will be followed by major roading and prison projects starting next year.  

He told Mike Hosking that alongside increasing the workforce, there should be other changes to help infrastructure flourish. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good news on building staff back home. The announcements are
turning into actual things. A six billion worth of major
infrastructure projects are set to go between now and Christmas.
Hospital laboratories, schools, amongst the mixed Four and a half
thousand jobs is what they're claiming. Barnie Yubin is the
executive director for the Northern Infrastructure Forum and as with us,
Barney morning, good morning. Is this a reheat or the

(00:21):
real deal? I mean, we knew this stuff was coming,
didn't we.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, yeah, we did.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
So.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Look on the other hand, on the one hand, is
a bit of a so what with it? I mean,
these these projects here, as you say, we're due to
be announced in any case, and arguably some of them
should have been announced earlier. But on the other hand,
what it shows is that we're getting through to delivery
on some pretty chunky projects and that is going to

(00:46):
be very welcome news.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
How Chunk had given the pipeline. My understanding of the
ultimate pipeline of everybody building everything is, you know, hundreds
of billions of dollars. What is six buy? Does it
buy a lot of work and some good times for
a while?

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Well, look, it certainly does, and projects like Otuck, it's
north north of within mail mailon link. Those are significant projects.
And and then when you add that, you know, we
are expecting to see ground broken on some pretty significant
road projects next year as well, and other social infrastructure projects,

(01:21):
prisons and the like. So so look, there certainly is
a bit of movement there and and you know, again
that's it's really good news in particular for the contractors
after a really lean period. The big question is how
long can it be sustained? How long can we sustain
a growing.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Pipeline to them, because what you're talking about with the
pipeline is we've got to get people lined up and
you know, the exodus to Australia and all that sort
of stuff. Is this a denton that does this help
the pipeline?

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Look, it certainly is a start, but we all know
the scale of the work that is required to sort
of bridge the gap and meet the country's needs in
the years ahead. And you know, and that's the bit
where we need to see progress. You know, we need
we need to work through these changes to to planning,

(02:17):
to planning consenting regime. We need to you know, get
more consistency in policy making to stop these these sort
of flip flops between between one government the needs we
need to make better use of private capital.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
All right, good to see it. I appreciate it very much. Barny.
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