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States on notice: get
cracking on cities
By James Massola
Australia's big cities must start planning now to cope with a booming population, water scarcity and higher energy costs, Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese says. Any state that did not have in place by January 1, 2012, the city plans agreed on at the Council of Australian Governments in December could miss out on federal funding. In a speech to be delivered in Brisbane today, the minister will highlight how drought, increased demand for public transport and a shortage of affordable housing have contributed to a slide in living standards in Australia's cities. The minister will also launch the first State of Australia's Cities report, written by Infrastructure Australia's major cities unit, which he says is the "most comprehensive document of its kind produced in Australia". A world-wide quality of living survey by the Mercer Group in the five years to 2009 found that Sydney had slipped from 5th to 10th, Melbourne from 12th to 18th and Brisbane from 24th to 34th. The Mercer report said cities that had invested in infrastructure were generally the ones that had supplanted Australian cities. Mr Albanese said former prime minister Gough Whitlam had invested directly in cities, a tradition continued under the Hawke- Keating government's Better Cities
program, which was cancelled by the Howard government. "The former government had programs for FUNDING TIE:
Anthony Albanese says cities policy is core business for the national Government. regional Australia, but when it came to cities policy, it regarded it as none of its business. I believe that cities policy is core business for the national Government," he said. "This critical investment in infrastructure has been recognised by the Rudd Government and we've acted with public transport, road, urban water, social housing, education and community projects across the nation." The report said three-quarters of the population lived in 17 cities with a population of more than 100,000, and nearly 80 per cent of GDP was produced by businesses in cities. Mr Albanese said the states had to plan for a population of 36 million by 2050, as predicted in the recent Intergenerational Report, which said the populations of Sydney and Melbourne would reach 7 million, and Canberra half a million. "We will not be shy about tying future Commonwealth funding to those city plans," he said. The report found that residential energy use was rising, with devices
using standby power the greatest contributor to the growth. It also found that more people were recycling, but the level of household waste increased 31
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