General News
12 June, 2024
North West leaders chase collaboration in Canberra
The NWQROC delegation wants a new system to deliver big projects.
Mayors of the North West have “opened the batting” in the effort to conceive a formal infrastructure partnership between federal, state and local government, with a delegation pounding the aisles of parliament last week.
Armed with its Enabling Infrastructure Masterplan, a delegation of representatives from the 11 member councils of the North West Queensland Regional Organisation of Councils (NWQROC) met with a slew of government ministers and opposition spokespeople as part of a whole-of-region campaign to demonstrate how our infrastructure needs align with the broader policy objectives of the federal government.
NWQROC executive director Greg Hoffman said the delegation spoke with political leaders in Canberra about the need for the creation of a formalised mechanism to overhaul the way “big ticket” infrastructure projects were funded, developed and delivered.
He said the creation of a North West Infrastructure Partnership would enable all three levels of government to work collaboratively on “transformational infrastructure” that would best capitalise on the anticipated boom in critical mineral and renewable sector expansion across our region.
“It’s a long-term challenge to create a more collaborative approach across all tiers of government – the idea of more collaboration across government departments and portfolios is stage one. Stage two is to get governments at all levels to talk to each other more,” Mr Hoffman said.
“At the moment, funding streams are often released at different times of the year and you don’t have complementary criteria. There is often no alignment of decision-making. We need to make smarter use of the funding available.”
Under the infrastructure partnership proposal, representatives from federal, state and local government would collaborate on strategies to overhaul the existing “silos” of funds and grants, which are generally controlled by a single department, and instead look at how multi-departmental financial packages could be developed that would support larger projects.
“There are projects in the infrastructure masterplan that cannot be progressed under existing funding programs nor by one level of government alone,” the brief by NWQROC states.
“Addressing the infrastructure needs of North West Queensland requires a mature forward-looking approach and the NWQROC is keen to initiate this discussion.”
Mr Hoffman said there had been a positive response from federal political offices to the partnership concept.
“They welcomed how we have come together as a region,” he said.
“We are out of sight and out of mind unless there is something that draws attention to the region – and, sadly and increasingly – it is natural disasters that does that.
“The federal government wants to move away from always building back damaged infrastructure and instead actually build it better so that it can withstand the flooding and other natural disasters.
“In other words, flip the spending from recovery to resilience to overcome the problem of recurring infrastructure damage.
“The way to do that is to find within government the bigger funding streams to tackle the intractable problems.”
Mr Hoffman said the masterplan would next be presented to state government politicians, possibly in September, in the lead-up to the Queensland election.
“The masterplan is an advocacy document – it is the starting point of our representation to federal and state government to deal with the issues facing the North West,” he said.
“We opened the batting in Canberra and next we are going to take the masterplan to Brisbane.”
NWQROC chair and Carpentaria Shire mayor Jack Bawden said he remained hopeful the federal government had listened to the messages from the delegation.
“The ministers and advisers we saw took a lot of notes while we spoke to them,” he said.
“Whether they actually look at those notes again and do something about it – well, we will have to wait and see.”
