Environment and Sustainability, Passenger Rail, Research & Development

Albo slams Turnbull’s ‘reinvented wheel’

Shadow minister Anthony Albanese says the Coalition’s plans to publish a report on major cities in 2017 is “simply reinventing the wheel” after the Coalition abolished the former Labor Government’s Major Cities Unit.

Albanese on December 8 said plans for a report on cities, announced during Turnbull’s infrastructure address in November, would achieve the same aims once achieved by the annual State of Australian Cities reports.

“These reports were produced by the independent Major Cities Unit, which was abolished by the incoming Coalition Government as one of its first actions,” Albanese said.

“The State of Australian Cities report provides a comprehensive analysis of statistics and trends about the demographic and planning challenges facing Australia’s 20 largest cities.”

Albanese said the Unit’s reports were downloaded three million times, and were “heralded as a tremendous success and great resource by industry and policy experts”.

“They provided the basis for evidence-based policy decision making,” Albanese argued. “In contrast, the Coalition’s track record on cities policy and research has been dismal.”

According to Labor, the 2014 State of Australian Cities report took more than a year to publish, and was eventually published as a 2014-15 report, on July 6, 2015.

“Labor knows we need national leadership to ensure the productivity, sustainability and liveability of our cities,” Albanese concluded.