The Albanese Government needs to start negotiating in good faith with states and territories on funding for Australian roads.
Federal Labor Minister Catherine King has failed to provide a draft agreement that is acceptable to states and territories in sufficient time to enable meaningful and reasonable dialogue.
As a result, the existing agreement has now expired despite milestone payments for major road projects currently under construction due in coming months.
The existing agreement allows the Australian Treasurer to agree to an extension of up to six months.
Through the Board of Treasurers, I and other state Treasurers wrote to Dr Jim Chalmers on 11 June expressing our real concern that with less than three weeks left before the agreement expired there were still issues with the maturity of the draft agreement and supporting documentation, which had only been provided by Commonwealth officials a few weeks earlier.
Without an agreement in place, Canberra will withhold payments to state and territories, even for contracted projects currently under construction.
At issue are critical matters such as funding shares and cost sharing in relation to delivering our shared agenda to provide important upgrades to highways and bridges across Australia.
State and territory Treasurers requested a six-month extension to allow time for appropriate negotiation and the resolution of a range of significant issues and reforms arising from the Australian Government’s own appallingly delayed independent review of the Infrastructure Investment Program.
This includes the Australian Government continuing to fund 80 per cent of projects, rather than the 50 per cent suggested following its Infrastructure Investment Program review – pushing more costs onto states and effectively reducing the overall investment into Australia’s roads.
Rather than allow states and territories to negotiate in good faith, the requested extension was refused by Dr Chalmers, and Minister King is stonewalling on any reasonable discussion about this important agreement – and instead is suggesting that states must simply sign or risk not receiving the milestone payments that enable states to pay our contractors working on jointly funded projects such as the New Bridgewater Bridge.
These threatening tactics are totally unacceptable – the Albanese Government must extend the existing Land Transport Infrastructure agreement for six-months as the written agreement allows for, and commence negotiating in good faith.
