The Northern Australia Audit identifies the key challenges and critical infrastructure requirements for Northern Australia across the transport, water, energy and communications sectors.

Northern Australia is blessed with a wealth of natural resources, a strong agricultural sector, and world-renowned tourism attractions. There is enormous potential to further capitalise on Northern Australia's existing economic assets, and for the region to contribute even more to Australia's development.

Key audit findings include that:

• backlogs in maintaining existing assets must be a priority to fund and resolve
• robust analysis is essential to evaluating and prioritising investment decisions
• communities and the private sector need to drive decisions to ensure infrastructure meets the needs of users.

The work on this report is a primary evidence base for the development of both the Northern Australia White Paper and the Australian Infrastructure Plan.