Assessing progress against the 2016 Plan

The 2016 Australian Infrastructure Plan made 78 recommendations, guided by four headline aspirations: More productive cities and regions; efficient markets; sustainable and equitable infrastructure; and better decision-making and delivery.

The recommendations were aspirational, and we considered many would be challenging for government and industry.

Despite this, the sector's progress in meeting reform outcomes over the past five years has demonstrated how well the 2016 Plan's recommended reforms reflected the infrastructure sector's priorities, and that there is significant capacity within government and industry to enact positive change.

In 2020, Infrastructure Australia commissioned EY Australia to review the infrastructure industry's progress against delivering reforms and prepare the Progress since the 2016 Australian Infrastructure Plan report.33

EY categorised the recommendations into ten broad assessment categories: Productivity, population, connectivity, regional, funding, competitive markets, sustainability and resilience, remote and First Nations communities, governance and best practice.

Their report found governments across Australia were at varying stages of progress against the recommendations in the 2016 Plan. The report found substantial progress had been made on the majority of the recommendations of the 15-year 2016 Plan, within its first five years.