In his ministerial reshuffle earlier this year, Malcolm Turnbull made Angus Taylor, an up-and-coming Liberal MP, the assistant minister for cities and digital transformation.

Taylor tells Michelle Grattan there needs to be agreement across all three levels of government to meet the challenges of jobs growth, transport and housing affordability faced by the nation’s cities.

“We have already said we’re going to use the mechanism of “city deals”, which is an agreement across federal, state and local governments on a strategy for each of our individual cities, recognising that no two solutions will be the same.”

Taylor also says Australia will need to find “innovative ways of financing increased investment in our cities”.

“We won’t be able to finance the very significant investments required in our cities just on budget. We’ll have to look off the budget. We’ll have to look to use our balance sheet,” he says.