Foreword
Australia's response to the global economic downturn demonstrated the Rudd Government's quick and decisive action in supporting the Australian economy, and its commitment to invest for long-term prosperity.
In 2009, Australia had the fastest growth among the world's advanced economies. Australia has far lower debt and deficit compared with major advanced economies.
Our economy is getting stronger despite significant challenges still facing other major advanced economies.
Of course challenges still remain for the Australian economy. We will face challenges such as infrastructure bottlenecks and skills shortages sooner than other countries whose economies are weaker.
We also face the long-term challenges of an ageing and growing population, technological and climate change and evolving international trade. These changes are affecting the structure of the Australian economy.
This is why investing in skills and infrastructure is so important. These investments are helping Australia to thrive in the changing world economy by creating opportunities for employment and, with this, the chance for all to share in Australia's future prosperity.
The imperative of creating opportunity for all Australians guides every stage of the Government's education reforms. The focus is on strengthening the quality of learning and assisting Australians to participate in work and in their community.
Much has been done already. Long-term initiatives like early childhood learning and schooling are giving our future generations the best possible start in life and building the foundations to allow more Australians to move into rewarding careers in the 21st century economy.
We are also driving excellence and equity in higher education by opening the doors of universities to a new generation of Australians, creating new partnerships between disadvantaged schools and universities and targeting student income support so that more Australians can actually go to university. We are determined to provide new opportunities for working-age Australians and to close the education and training gap for Indigenous Australians.
In this Budget, the Rudd Government is again investing in education and skills. The Skills for Sustainable Growth strategy will:
- support more apprentices and provide training to address emerging skills shortages
- improve literacy and numeracy so many more Australians are ready for work
- lift the quality and capacity of vocational education and training.
Many people in our regions and many young Australians are still seeking work. We know that we need to train more Australians and not rely too heavily on skilled migration to solve skills shortages.
The same theme of creating opportunities runs through the Government's unprecedented investment in infrastructure and its renewed focus on urban policy. Increasing congestion, deteriorating transport networks and stagnating productivity were constraining the capacity of the economy to grow sustainably. One cause of those problems was the underinvestment in our critical infrastructure over decades. From day one, the Rudd Government has taken the action needed to turn that around.
We immediately restored national leadership on infrastructure, starting with the new Federal Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, and a new national advisory body, Infrastructure Australia. Infrastructure Australia has already undertaken a national audit of infrastructure and identified a pipeline of projects and a national infrastructure priority list.
We backed up these institutional reforms with record investments, setting up the Building Australia Fund and rolling out the Nation Building program and spending $37.0 billion on road, rail and port infrastructure. In total, we have doubled road spending and quadrupled rail spending.
This investment has provided a boost to our economy in the short term, supporting jobs in the face of the global financial crisis. In the longer term, it will help to raise our levels of productivity, create new opportunities for business and prepare our economy to stay one step ahead of the global competition.
In this Budget the Government continues lifting investment in long-term productivity growth, and tackling bottlenecks and supply constraints. The Government's strategy achieves this through:
- modernisation of the interstate freight rail network
- investment in transforming the movement of freight into and out of Port Botany and through the Sydney Basin.
We have put unprecedented levels of investment into addressing the infrastructure deficit but this is just part of the picture. The Australian Government understands that boosting the nation's productivity is not just about investment, it's about reforms that build a seamless national economy, that better plan infrastructure, and that use existing infrastructure more productively.
This Ministerial Statement explains how the Government will invest in skilling Australians and how we will support the infrastructure that is so necessary to sustain economic recovery in our cities and our regions.
This statement outlines the next stages of the Rudd Government's plan to secure Australia's future.
Part one summarises the main budget measures.
Part two outlines the challenges confronting the economy in skills and infrastructure, the opportunities these provide and what has informed the Government's decisions for the 2010 Budget.
Part three details the priorities and new initiatives of the Government for promoting sustainable economic growth through skills and infrastructure investment.
With the new investments announced in this Budget, we advance further towards achieving the Rudd Government's goal of a stronger and fairer Australia for all.
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