RA met with Senator the Hon. Carol Brown, recently appointed Federal Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport this week to discuss our submission on the independent review of Infrastructure Australia (IA), as well as road worker safety issues.
During the meeting we discussed several key recommendations contained in our submission, particularly around the opportunity for IA to play a leadership role in driving increased productivity in the transport infrastructure sector. These include:
- The development of a nationally coordinated forward project pipeline;
- Establishing a framework for the inclusion of social outcomes in procurement;
- Expanding IA’s work around market capacity to focus on specific sectors in more detail, allowing more effective monitoring of labour workforce supply and potential skills shortages in high demand areas; and
- Encouraging greater uptake of digital technology in project planning, design and asset management.
RA also highlighted how a lack of comprehensive data around deaths, injuries and near-misses involving roads workers is hampering the development of effective policy responses. We encouraged the Assistant Minister to work with the Office of Road Safety to develop a national system for gathering and reporting this data.
We look forward to welcoming the Assistant Minister to an RA event in the near future.
