Is politics costing NZ billions in wasted infrastructure planning?

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1. 0:06Speaker 1: Kia ora, I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is The Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Infrastructure
2. 0:17Speaker 1: shapes our daily lives, but some might think that it's too often planned election by election. Infrastructure New Zealand wants to put an end to stop-start funding and shifting priorities,
3. 0:29Speaker 1: launching a campaign called Let's Build NZ. The campaign promises to put choices in front of voters and rate the parties against its eight priorities. Today on the front page,
4. 0:41Speaker 1: Infrastructure NZ Chief Executive Nick Leggett is with us to explain what concrete changes he wants to see so we
5. 0:48Speaker 1: can build for generations, not just the next election. So, Nick, the tagline for Let's Build NZ, the campaign there, is
6. 0:58Speaker 1: build for generations, not elections. What's the thinking behind this?
7. 1:03Speaker 2: Well, infrastructure is a long-term game, and we spend billions of dollars a year building infrastructure that enables Kiwis to.
8. 1:12Speaker 3: get a decent education and a.
9. 1:13Speaker 2: Good classroom, be treated in a good hospital, drive on roads, catch public transport that works, consume water that's healthy and
10. 1:23Speaker 2: doesn't hurt us. Those are all things that take a long, there's a long gestation period for infrastructure. Yet, in recent
11. 1:33Speaker 2: years in this country, it's these individual projects have become political issues. They've become political battlegrounds. And so we're saying, actually,
12. 1:44Speaker 2: we've got to pitch to the long term. We've got to fund things over the long term and ultimately take as much of infrastructure as possible out of politics, you know,
13. 1:56Speaker 2: the political.
14. 1:56Speaker 3: To-ing and fro-ing. Because what happens is.
15. 1:59Speaker 2: a political party and government will make an announcement and there'll be the sort of yay around that and there'll be a bit of political benefit. And then often nothing's
16. 2:09Speaker 2: particularly well planned or designed. They then dive deeply into, you know, which is very.
17. 2:15Speaker 3: Costly, into planning and design.
18. 2:17Speaker 2: And before a project gets the green light, there has to be money.
19. 2:22Speaker 3: And often the money just isn't there.
20. 2:24Speaker 2: And what we've seen this a lot over the last few years, political promise, perhaps quite a bit of money spent on design, but no real capital available to build the thing.
21. 2:34Speaker 3: And then the next government comes in and it's canned.
22. 2:37Speaker 3: And what happens?
23. 2:38Speaker 2: We get a lot of raised expectations, money spent, but we ultimately delay the big decisions. And we all know it's always cheaper today to build something and to do
24. 2:50Speaker 2: it right than it is to keep pushing it down the road. So this campaign is about saying we've got to get our act together. where it comes to infrastructure funding.
25. 3:02Speaker 2: Let the experts do their work, keep the politicians on track to get the best deal for taxpayers and ratepayers,
26. 3:11Speaker 2: but set the long-term ambition, but ultimately don't get involved in the sort of project by project because that's what
27. 3:22Speaker 2: costs New Zealand. Over the last 25 years, we've spent almost $ 12 billion as a country. We've wasted $ 12 billion on....
28. 3:32Speaker 3: Cancelling projects. And that's about politics. That's not about people.
29. 3:36Speaker 2: That's not about the benefit for communities. It's not about benefiting businesses. It doesn't make New Zealand go any faster.
30. 3:44Speaker 2: We're paying for politics. And during this election campaign, Infrastructure New Zealand, you know, we're not a partisan organisation. We think that All sides of politics do want to improve infrastructure.
31. 3:56Speaker 2: And there have been some real steps made in the last three years that all parties have agreed with. But, Chelsea,
32. 4:03Speaker 2: what will change this is political behaviour. And there's no better time to improve political behaviour than in an election
33. 4:11Speaker 2: where we can take some facts, take some evidence to voters...
34. 4:16Speaker 2: and then ask them to bear that in mind and to hold politicians to account, not just in the selection period, but beyond.
35. 4:22Speaker 1: Can you give us an example of one of these projects that have kind of been promised and then cancelled?
36. 4:28Speaker 1: An example maybe that isn't Auckland Light Rail.
37. 4:32Speaker 3: Yeah, sure.
38. 4:33Speaker 2: Well, I've got another Auckland example, but I can give you some non-Auckland examples.
39. 4:37Speaker 3: I mean, the second Waitematā.
40. 4:41Speaker 2: Crossing, the Auckland Harbour Bridge crossing, whatever you want to call it, replacement or resilience.
41. 4:47Speaker 3: I mean, that's been talked about for decades. There have been, you know, two or three.
42. 4:52Speaker 2: That I know of sort of investigations into options and, you know, how could we do this differently?
43. 4:58Speaker 3: How can we build a second Auckland Harbour Crossing?
44. 5:01Speaker 2: You know, and the big, fact that I want to sort of stick into this discussion early on is the Auckland Harbour Bridge as it currently exists, you know, there will be a point where it fails if we don't
45. 5:13Speaker 2: do something. And so this isn't a nice to have.
46. 5:16Speaker 2: This is a resilience project for Auckland and the New Zealand, the wider New Zealand economy. Now, there have been lots of roundabouts over the years going around in circles. Oh, gee,
47. 5:26Speaker 2: now it's a bit expensive to confront this. And we're on, you know, another version of that now. But what we need to happen is there needs to be a decision, and that decision needs to probably be across the Parliament
48. 5:37Speaker 2: because there will be more than one government involved in delivering it. And it needs to happen as a matter of urgency. But, look, let's get Wellington moving is another one.
49. 5:47Speaker 2: The IRX ferry debacle. How many, you know, we probably wasted $ 600 million on that. Like, and that's not a
50. 5:57Speaker 2: judgment on... You know, the decision that was made, it's just a statement of fact. We've wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on just one project because of the politics.
51. 6:08Speaker 3: And I suspect the original decision was a big problem.
52. 6:11Speaker 2: I think the intervention probably had to happen at a certain level. But can't we arrive at the right decision first time around and back it?
53. 6:21Speaker 3: Because we throw.
54. 6:24Speaker 2: billions of dollars away, that's money that isn't spent on quality infrastructure that benefits the lives of Kiwis, that makes the economy go faster. And when we delay, when we
55. 6:34Speaker 2: delay projects, those benefits either don't happen, they're not realised, or they take many, many more years and countless hundreds
56. 6:44Speaker 2: of millions of dollars in some cases where we just don't get that benefit. So this is about changing behaviour for our country.
57. 6:54Speaker 1: Right, so tell me about this infrastructure policy scorecard. How will that actually work and what are these eight priorities that you're kind of judging parties on?
58. 7:03Speaker 2: Yeah, well, look, we've written a manifesto and it isn't about a manifesto saying we want this and we want that because this isn't about spending more money. It's about
59. 7:12Speaker 2: getting better value for taxpayers and ratepayers from the money New Zealand already spends on infrastructure. We've written a manifesto which people can look at at the Let's Build NZ
60. 7:21Speaker 2: website which summarises... some of the topics and some of the issues. We've talked about things in that manifesto. Having
61. 7:30Speaker 2: a better system, that's a better end-to-end design, planning, funding, and ultimately delivery of public infrastructure. So all of, you know,
62. 7:39Speaker 2: whether it's a government agency or a council, they're just better disciplined. They've got a better system that is more efficient at delivering infrastructure.
63. 7:48Speaker 3: That starts with knowing what you want. And we think there's.
64. 7:52Speaker 2: Definitely an economic need for New Zealand to develop an ambition about what it ultimately, the sort of economy that it wants to become, what are the parts of the
65. 8:03Speaker 2: economy we're going to back so we grow faster, we earn more overseas from our exports, and that allows us to have better public services. But also energy is a
66. 8:13Speaker 2: massive factor. We need abundant energy. renewable, affordable energy. That is the backbone of everything else we want to do.
67. 8:22Speaker 2: That makes a difference on our power bill at home.
68. 8:25Speaker 2: It means that businesses can deliver more and more affordably, so they're more competitive, both here in New Zealand but also overseas.
69. 8:36Speaker 3: These are all parts of our manifesto.
70. 8:40Speaker 2: And then we've asked political parties with a scorecard, we've asked them a series of questions, and they're not hard questions.
71. 8:45Speaker 2: They're not questions where we're trying to play gotcha politics, because ultimately there will be a government after November the 7th, and there'll be a government three years beyond that and
72. 8:56Speaker 2: three years beyond that. What we need, Chelsea, is a much stronger government programme of funded work that moves across governments.
73. 9:06Speaker 2: Other nations do better than we do at that challenge.
74. 9:11Speaker 2: Things move seamlessly between governments because they're not politicising infrastructure.
75. 9:15Speaker 3: We get the second worst.
76. 9:18Speaker 2: Value for every dollar we spend on infrastructure in the developed world. Part of that is because we've politicised this too much.
77. 9:24Speaker 3: There's too much to-ing and fro-ing.
78. 9:26Speaker 2: So we've asked for the scorecard, we have asked political parties, and we will report back to voters directly on what the parties say about the questions that we've asked them.
79. 9:35Speaker 1: So this scorecard, I'm just envisioning, you know, at an ice rink, an ice skating, you chuck up a card saying 6.2, 7.8. Will it be something like that?
80. 9:44Speaker 2: It will be something like that. It'll be a green light or a, yeah, that's right. It'll give voters an idea on, well, where are these parties on growth?
81. 9:55Speaker 3: Where are they on a 12-year plan?
82. 10:01Speaker 2: Now, that means a funded, sequenced, 12-year infrastructure programme.
83. 10:06Speaker 3: It's not all the specifics.
84. 10:08Speaker 2: Those can be reviewed, not an election when a party wins government, but halfway through a term. And what you get is you'll get better efficiency of spend. You'll get say,
85. 10:19Speaker 2: the transport agency being able to get more efficiency, better value, because they'll know three years from now that they're going to maintain this number of roading assets. They're going to have to build this new road. They're going to replace
86. 10:31Speaker 2: these bridges. At the moment, it's topsy-turvy. It's random. Politicians are too down on the details. Now, politicians are not project managers. We want them to be good stewards of
87. 10:43Speaker 2: the system, to vote the money, to monitor things, to make sure the public is getting what they need and getting value. But we don't want them sitting there ticking off projects and saying, yes, this goes. We want that
88. 10:53Speaker 2: to be far more informed by what New Zealand needs, not what politicians think is right and what motivates them for election time.
89. 11:08Speaker 3: Well, it's all about ribbon cutting, you know.
90. 11:11Speaker 1: But anyway, what we're now seeing is a bit of a kind of concentration on not chopping and changing all the time.
91. 11:18Speaker 3: You know, it's known that there's a cost to that.
92. 11:20Speaker 2: Shama Bill Equab went out and he totted it up with something like 11 billion over, you know, the last little while.
93. 11:26Speaker 1: Missed opportunities as well as picking it up and carrying it on. Are there any projects right now on the books that are at risk, do you think, of becoming just,
94. 11:37Speaker 1: you know, chopped by the next government, whoever's in government?
95. 11:40Speaker 2: The roads of national significance have been scaled back. But I would say that any project that isn't signed up, because Labour, you know, have said very responsibly they're not
96. 11:52Speaker 2: going to cancel projects where things are signed up. And, of course, that's what happened with IRX. You know, the boats were being built and they were canned. So.
97. 12:01Speaker 3: That's good.
98. 12:02Speaker 2: That's a sign because I think infrastructure, New Zealand and the wider infrastructure industry has spent the last few years saying, come on, we can't afford to cancel projects. That's one
99. 12:12Speaker 2: part of the puzzle, but it's actually getting more agreement across the Parliament on what's important, not Not getting ideology in between saying, we should do this and not that.
100. 12:24Speaker 3: Actually, we'll always need a balance.
101. 12:26Speaker 2: If you think about roads, rail, public transport, we need a really good balance. We want all parties to be ultimately, I think, investing more in everything. Sometimes that balance might
102. 12:36Speaker 2: shift around depending on who's in government. But what we see at the moment is a much... You know, Labour will say, we don't want to build any more roads.
103. 12:43Speaker 2: National will say, look, we're not that interested in public transport.
104. 12:46Speaker 2: And actually, that's not where New Zealand needs to be.
105. 12:50Speaker 2: So what we're hoping for is a greater balance over time.
106. 12:54Speaker 2: And we're wanting the scorecard to reveal and hold parties to account on what their actual priorities will be in government, or if they're part of a government, and how good
107. 13:05Speaker 2: they feel about... Actually, you know, we are... piss poor, if I can use that expression, at looking after the infrastructure we've already built.
108. 13:15Speaker 3: We're fourth worst in the world. We sit and forget.
109. 13:18Speaker 2: You know, water's a very good example of that in many parts of the country. Age networks, leaking pipes, because we haven't spent the money on maintaining and renewing them.
110. 13:30Speaker 2: And the same's true for rail. It's true for roading.
111. 13:34Speaker 2: We've got to get much better at that.
112. 13:35Speaker 3: That takes... We do need political leadership to.
113. 13:40Speaker 2: Vote the money and ensure that the money is spent every year, leaking classrooms, old hospitals, you name it, we can do better where it comes to those infrastructure assets
114. 13:52Speaker 2: that we've already got.
115. 13:53Speaker 1: What is a future major infrastructure project where you can realistically see parties across the board agreeing on?
116. 14:03Speaker 2: There should be very few projects where they don't agree, Chelsea.
117. 14:07Speaker 2: I've used the second Auckland Harbour crossing because it's big and it will be expensive ultimately, whatever it is. And that's where parties need to get around the table. I
118. 14:18Speaker 2: would like to see on those big, we call them mega projects. If you think about CRL, basic examples, big gnarly project that's going to have, really, I think it's
119. 14:27Speaker 2: going to reverberate for years if we can get the surrounding residential growth, you know, those high-rise accommodation, you know,
120. 14:38Speaker 2: apartments and things around it, that's going to keep, it's going to be the gift that keeps on giving. Projects like that that are expensive but that have many other benefits are That's the sort of thing where you'd expect
121. 14:49Speaker 2: Parliament should be able to legislate and all come together on.
122. 14:53Speaker 3: And there's no excuse why it shouldn't.
123. 14:54Speaker 2: The reason we're running this Let's Build New Zealand campaign is because we think The public will see the benefit and the smarts and that, but all of us need
124. 15:05Speaker 2: to use our voices in an election period to send the signal to politicians that we want them to work together on this. Let them politicise things that are more,
125. 15:13Speaker 2: you know, ultimately more political. But politicising infrastructure costs us billions of dollars in New Zealand.
126. 15:20Speaker 3: We can't afford that. We're a small country. We've got to use infrastructure to build our wealth, right?
127. 15:26Speaker 2: We can't keep throwing money down the drain while we get poorer because we want to have political fights over decisions that ultimately just shouldn't be as political as they are.
128. 15:36Speaker 3: There's always going to be to-ing and fro-ing. I accept that.
129. 15:38Speaker 2: I'm not trying to take democracy out of infrastructure. I'm not trying to take politics directly out of infrastructure. We just need less politics, less partisan politics. in our infrastructure system,
130. 15:50Speaker 2: parties squabbling over stuff that shouldn't be fought over. We've got to think about what the main game is, growing and improving the country. That's where the investment, that's where the dollar should be. The dollar shouldn't be spent in
131. 16:00Speaker 2: cancelling projects because there's been a change of government.
132. 16:03Speaker 1: How much of a problem sits with central government versus councils that perhaps don't have money to fund major upgrades of your water networks, for example?
133. 16:14Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean, that's why ultimately the government went with local water done well, and there are 42 new water entities being set up around the country to do that, and they're going to be able to borrow more.
134. 16:26Speaker 3: So I think that's a solution.
135. 16:28Speaker 2: You know, it won't be perfect straight away, but I think it's probably better than the one we've had. Ownership remains in the hands of New Zealanders, of local communities.
136. 16:40Speaker 2: I think local government does have a challenge, an affordability challenge, and of course the government's rates cap is one response to that.
137. 16:50Speaker 3: Local government is a bit starved of resources.
138. 16:54Speaker 2: And once again, it's just not about turning the money tap on and just letting them go. But you think about places like Queenstown, and the government's announced that they're going to share a bit more of that tourism levy
139. 17:05Speaker 2: with Queenstown, which I think will be significant, about $ 17 million a year to deal with their infrastructure problems. But we do need to give councils more tools to be
140. 17:16Speaker 2: able to pay for growth. because we all want growth, I think. We want it in the right places at the right time. And we've got to, I think, give
141. 17:26Speaker 2: regions and councils and cities more of a chance to really, you know, they've got to be empowered to pay for it.
142. 17:35Speaker 2: They've also got to be empowered to plan. And I think the new RMA is really good because spatial planning is going to allow us to look out to the future a bit more and plan what's coming. But you can plan to your heart's content. But if you can't
143. 17:46Speaker 2: pay for it, you're stuffed. So let's get going. And, you know, we shouldn't be scared. We're the most centralised country in the world outside North Korea, you know.
144. 17:57Speaker 3: In terms of democracy.
145. 17:58Speaker 2: 91% of the taxes we pay goes to central government.
146. 18:02Speaker 2: We're all reliant on central government. Central government doesn't always come to the party. So part of this campaign is saying to Kiwis, come on, let's ask them to move
147. 18:11Speaker 2: smarter and ask them to move faster, and ultimately we'll.
148. 18:15Speaker 3: Get better results from our infrastructure if we do that.
149. 18:17Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Nick.
150. 18:19Speaker 3: Thank you, as always, Chelsea.
151. 18:24Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
152. 18:31Speaker 1: at nzherald.co.nz. The Front Page is hosted and produced by me, Chelsea Daniels. Kane Dickey is our studio operator, Richard Martin,
153. 18:41Speaker 1: our producer and editor, and our executive producer is Jane Yee.
154. 18:46Speaker 1: Follow The Front Page on the iHeart app or wherever you get your podcasts and join us next time for another look beyond the headlines.