The silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic is that to date Australia has handled the pandemic well, supported by critical infrastructure services and networks that were able to reconfigure quickly and deliver differently, and showed a resilience beyond many other OECD nations.

As the COVID-19 pandemic spread, Australian governments took early action, introducing travel bans, lockdowns, and border controls and supporting domestic supply chains. Communities adopted social distancing and moved to working from home. While these early measures successfully contained national case numbers, they prompted profound changes to the way people moved, consumed, and worked, changing patterns of infrastructure use.

This report identifies the impacts of migration changes and the consequences for skills and infrastructure demand. It reviews a wide range of infrastructure trends, their geographic distribution, and their likelihood of returning to historical trend after the pandemic. It is an interim report for the 2021 Australian Infrastructure Plan, and complements the 2019 Audit.