A year after Tony Abbott pledged to be an "infrastructure prime minister", he risks becoming the first Australian premier to preside over a recession since the early 1990s, in part due to the snail's pace of new building projects.

With economic growth already slowing, and spending in the mining industry set to plummet, getting Abbott's promised "bulldozers on the ground and cranes into our skies" could be critical to preventing a contraction.

Abbott's promised "bulldozers on the ground and cranes into our skies" have yet to materialise. Credit:Andrew Meares

Yet government figures this week showed public spending on capital works had actually shrunk in each of the past three quarters. Public investment was one of the biggest drags on the economy in the third quarter, when growth came in well below expectations at just 0.3 per cent.

As mega projects in liquefied natural gas come to completion over the next two years, the Reserve Bank estimates the wind-back in mining spending will slash 1.25 percentage points from economic growth next year, and perhaps as much again in 2016.