After spending two years looking for Australia's most worthy nation-building projects, Infrastructure Australia recently produced a priority list of 100 — more than a third of which were in New South Wales.
Sydney, with a population of more than 5 million, undeniably requires investment in infrastructure.
But Melbourne's population is catching up. With faster growth than any city in the country, Melbourne's population increased by 2.4 per cent in 2015-16, and now stands at more than 4.6 million.
Of the seven high priority projects with full business cases identified, three were in Sydney: M4 motorway upgrades, the Western Sydney Airport and the WestConnex road project.
Two were in Victoria: the Melbourne Metro Rail project and the M80 Ring Road upgrade.
But 35 of the 100 projects were in NSW, and only 15 were in Victoria.
Source: ABC Australia
Victoria previously 'well served'
Infrastructure Australia's executive director of policy, Adrian Dwyer, said the list was put together after an audit of the country's infrastructure needs in 2015.
"We published all of those details, we shared it with all states and territories and with the public, and we invited submissions on what some of the solutions to those challenges should be," he told ABC Radio Melbourne.
"That list is really a consensus view across our organisation and state governments about the major infrastructure — nationally significant infrastructure — that's required over the next 15 years."
Among the 15 Victorian projects listed by the body were the Murray Basin Rail Project, which will connect north-west Victoria to the ports of Geelong and Portland, and the Hoddle Street capacity upgrade.
You can see all the top 100 infrastructure priority projects from this link.
