The long-term development of Northern Australia would benefit immensely from making the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund (NAIF) a permanent body, as recommended by the 2024 independent review by the Hon Warren Snowdon, Professor Peter Yu and Dr Lisa Caffery.
Parliament’s support today for the long-term future of the $7 billion NAIF through passage of the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Amendment Bill 2026 is crucial to underpinning NAIF’s role in funding the strategic infrastructure to unlock one of Australia’s greatest economic opportunities.
Removing this sunset clause altogether should be the next step in acknowledging the importance of Northern Australia to national resilience, given it contains mineral resources with an estimated in-situ value of around $3 trillion – broadly equivalent to the size of Australia’s annual economy.
Realising even a fraction of this potential would support jobs, investment, exports and regional development for generations.
The priority for NAIF should be long-term investment in multi-user infrastructure that lowers costs, improves connectivity and unlocks private investment across the north including nation-building projects such as:
- Completing the sealing of the Tanami Road
- Strengthening freight connectivity between Mount Isa and the national rail network through Alice Springs
- Improving export links through Townsville and Wyndham.
Improved logistics capability would unlock new mineral provinces, support the development of new processing capacity and strengthen the long-term competitiveness of existing industrial assets.
Strategic freight corridors would improve access to internationally significant deposits, including the Ammaroo phosphate project, support the emergence of a future processing and logistics hub in Alice Springs, and reinforce the viability of nationally significant facilities such as the Mount Isa and Port Pirie smelters and the acids that are critical to rare earths and other metals processing.
Stronger connections to Southeast Asian markets would help position Northern Australia as a globally competitive investment destination for resource development and value-added processing.
Australia’s future prosperity will depend not only on the resources we have in the ground, but on our ability to efficiently move products to processors and customers.
With policy certainty and strategic infrastructure, Northern Australia can become an even more powerful engine of economic growth, exports and regional prosperity.
