I welcome my fellow Premiers and Chief Ministers here to Canberra for this my second meeting of COAG.
And of course, Mike Baird and Will Hodgman’s first meeting of COAG. Welcome and congratulations.
I see this as a very important part of governance in Australia and not an opportunity for the Commonwealth to give anyone lectures but more an opportunity for all of us to learn from each other.
We have got some quite significant items on the agenda this morning. I am particularly pleased to see so much work that we are doing together on infrastructure because right around Australia our citizens expect us to make a difference. They expect us to put political differences that we might sometimes have behind us and to work together to make a difference to their lives.
I guess one of the most tangible things of all is to get busy building the roads and other infrastructure of the 21st century that we so badly need.
We have a Commonwealth infrastructure agenda. Certainly, I hope to be the infrastructure Prime Minster. I know you want to be infrastructure Premiers and Chief Ministers as well.
Not only will we be talking about the projects that we are currently working together on but later on today we will be talking about ways of the Commonwealth assisting states and territories on additional infrastructure projects which are your initiatives – not necessarily joint initiatives.
I think it is quite an exciting day that we have got ahead of us and I am looking forward to it very much.
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