At this time, everyone loves infrastructure, everyone supports more spending on infrastructure. Nice one Wayne.

It raises the question though: why did infrastructure spending become so unpopular in Australia over the past two decades? After all, the past 15 years have been Australia’s greatest ever income growth period.

Two reasons stand out. One is that our state governments became super-scared of raising debt for capital expenditure after the financial strife the Victorian and South Australian governments got themselves into during the 1980s. Second, the federal government forgot about the state of our cities, preferring to bang its chest about how big its surplus was, forgetting it was actually the public’s money that was being unspent, and that the public’s infrastructure assets were in dreadful need of renewal.

Wayne’s rabbit tricks notwithstanding, we now face two infrastructure demands: a long maintenance backlog on existing infrastructure; and an urgent need for new infrastructure especially in telecommunications and broadband, freight transport, public transport, and, of course, more and better roads.

At the same time, concerns for global warming demand that we re-engineer our cities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; with an urgency heightened by rising oil prices.

Finally, our views of desirable urban living are changing, with a growing number wanting more than the humdrum of neat suburban life, preferring a city that offers amenity, busy-ness, closeness, access, walkability, perhaps a bit of neighbourhood funk – meaning infrastructure spending to assist higher residential densities nearer our city centres and better access all round.

Getting the infrastructure agenda right, then, is a tall order, demanding much public debate and involvement. To this end, the Urban Research Centre and the Whitlam Institute at the University of Western Sydney are teaming with the Business Council of Australia to present a public forum on “Innovative Solutions to the Urban Infrastructure Crisis.”