Building Infrastructure to drive economic growth

We are undertaking the largest infrastructure investment program of any state government in Australia. Over the next 4 years we will invest $65.5 billion in infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and roads - supporting up to 165 000 jobs a year.

In partnership with the Federal Government we are delivering NSW’s biggest ever school infrastructure program. We will deliver improvements and support jobs in more than 3,000 locations.

Speeding up planning decisions

We are speeding up planning assessments to drive investment, support job creation and provide certainty for business by:

• introducing New Project Managers to speed up key investment projects.

• implementing targets for decisions and timings to speed up the assessment process for major projects.

• providing extra resources to help councils speed up development assessments and rezonings.

Encouraging innovation

We will continue to drive innovation in our state by:

• promoting innovation in Government procurement

• attracting knowledge industry businesses to NSW and develop sectors that have a high demand for innovative and cutting edge technology, such as defence

• promoting innovation through better regulation

• sharing knowledge across the state to promote successful innovation by highlighting best practice

• offering incentives for innovation and research, such as our $5 million energy challenge prize to inspire clean energy solutions for NSW.

Cutting red tape

We will continue to aggressively cut public sector red tape by removing the unnecessary rules and regulations that hold business back.

We are on track to save the business and community $500 million by June 2011 as a result of these reforms including:

• appointing a single point of contact for each industry sector to speed up job creating projects, eliminate bottlenecks, reduce delays and fast track investment projects

• a renewed State Contracts Control Board to streamline the procurement of goods and services and improve how Government communicates procurement opportunities

• contracts with Agency CEOs requiring a reduction of red tape.

Maintaining NSW’s AAA rating

The AAA credit rating tells the world that our state finances are well managed, underpinning investment and growth. We are balancing the need to stimulate economic activity and protect jobs while ensuring that NSW’s finances remain secure over the long term. This means we can continue to deliver growth in services and attract investment to our state. Our approach has meant we have retained our AAA credit rating through the economic downturn, one of the few states/provinces in the world to do so.

Making our electricity supply more reliable

To achieve 99.98% average reliability in our electricity supply by 2016, the we are investing in the largest energy infrastructure program in the NSW’s history. The plan includes:

• stronger laws to protect vital electricity supply cables

• $16.7 billion in electricity infrastructure over the next 5 years

• $800 million in the CityGrid project

• working with the private sector to backup power systems in central Sydney

• installing protection equipment for the four major transmission cables into the northern part of Sydney’s CBD, including fibre optic cable

• investing $1.5 billion in the rural/regional areas in 2009-10. A further $700 million will be spent on projects that are multi-regional and will provide benefit all over the State.

Payroll Tax

We are committed to reducing Payroll Tax. Payroll tax has already been cut from 5.75% to 5.65% on January 1, 2010, as part of payroll tax reforms that will see it cut to 5.5% in January 2011.

Our government increased the payroll tax free threshold to $638,000 in July 2009, and indexed this threshold so that businesses don’t pay more tax due to bracket creep.