Yeni Zelanda Hükümeti Building Nations 2026'da Altyapı Politikasını Anlattı

Speech to Building Nations

Introduction Good morning, everyone. It’s absolutely fantastic to be here today at Building Nations 2026. I’d like to thank Nick Leggett, Fraser Wyllie and their team at Infrastructure New Zealand for hosting this event. Building Nations is always one of the highlights of my year, because it brings together nearly a thousand of our smartest people to talk infrastructure policy. Being Infrastructure Minister is an interesting one because my interests span different sectors like health, education, energy, corrections, justice, and transport – but there are already Ministers for those (including myself, of course). But my point is that when it comes to the infrastructure portfolio the job is about systems thinking and going back to the fundamentals. My job is to progress policy that lifts the bar for all sectors like proper asset management, high-quality assurance, and better infrastructure funding and financing tools. I’m really proud of the massive progress we’ve made over the past three years, and I want to reflect on that with you all today. Then, I’d like to talk a bit about the Auckland Strategic Motorway Plan, which I have apparently announced four or so times already – but I’ll properly announce it today! To finish, I’ll talk to you about what’s next and what you can expect from a second term with a National-led government. Achievements and highlights So, let’s take it back to the start. Three years ago, I had the enormous privilege of being appointed Minister for Infrastructure. From my time in Opposition, where I’d deliberately consulted widely and worked hard, I knew there was an enormous amount to do. From 2019 to 2023, research from the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission showed that our system wasn’t in good shape. Despite being in the top 10 per cent of OECD countries for infrastructure spending, we are in the bottom 10 per cent for what we get for our spend. We rank fourth to last in the OECD for asset management. Half of all capital-intensive central government agencies reported that they did not have robust asset registers or adequate asset management plans – and even fewer had long-term investment plans. And around half of all proposals for investments in recent Budgets did not have complete detailed business cases. On top of this, the time between funding and delivery has been too long, with some projects starting years and years after a project had been announced, which has been incredibly frustrating for the construction sector. Every New Zealander experiences the flow on effects of our underperforming infrastructure system. I can rattle off too many failures like communities waiting years for basic investments in schools, whilst a lucky few get architectural masterpieces; frequent transport disruptions due to weather events; and leaky, mouldy, asbestos-ridden hospitals that haven’t been looked after properly. We had no long-term plan to fix these underlying issues. This is not what Kiwis deserve from government, and it is my strong view that we need to do better. I had six priorities coming to office: I’m proud we’ve made significant progress on all of these priorities. An enormous amount of work has been done in just three years. But before I get into those six, I just want to touch on some highlights. By the end of 2026, we will have started construction on over $20 billion worth of central government infrastructure projects. We have signed two major Public Private Partnership (PPP) contracts: Stage 1 of the Northern Expressway, and Christchurch Men’s Prison. These two projects alone represent thousands of jobs, and I’m told workers are already onsite. By early 2027, we will have started construction on six Roads of National Significance, which – within the space of just three years, is a significant achievement. And, behind it all sits a pipeline of funded projects across transport, health, education, corrections, and justice. This includes Cambridge to Piarere, a $400m road resilience package, the Nelson Hospital Redevelopment, a new ward tower at Whangārei Hospital, several new police stations and courthouses, and over $2 billion for schools and classrooms. So, let’s talk about the six infrastructure priorities I started with in 2023. Six infrastructure priorities delivered On the National Infrastructure Plan (NIP), we asked the independent Infrastructure Commission to produce a 30-year NIP, and in June this year the Government provided a formal response – supporting all 16 recommendations either in full or in part. I won’t go into all the details, but there are a few main actions that are critical. For example, the Government has agreed to introduce legislative requirements for asset registers, asset management plans, and long-term capital plans in the Public Finance Act. Regulated utilities and local government are required to have these artefacts by law, but we currently don’t hold central government to the same standard. That is going to change. We are also shifting independent assurance for central-government-funded infrastructure from Treasury to the Infrastructure Commission and creating a new assurance function for asset management plans and long-term capital plans. Ministers want better quality information, and we want clear, actionable advice from the experts – Is this a good or bad project? Is it needed now? Is it consistent with the asset management plan or long-term plan? Can we strip some cost out? We want those answers because, ultimately, Ministers are accountable to the public for investment decisions. When it comes to strengthening asset management, the NIP was instrumental. Actions like legislating for asset registers and asset management plans and reporting on asset performance will be a game changer, as will having independent assurance over asset management plans. Fixing the fundamentals of our system is the single best thing we can do to build a pipeline that endures political cycles. Right now, there is about $290 billion worth of infrastructure projects in the pipeline – around $190 billion with a confirmed funding source. I reckon all parties probably agree on 90 to 99 per cent of those projects. But I think we should move away from the rhetoric of needing a fully bipartisan pipeline – we are never going to agree on every single project, and that’s okay. That’s the nature of politics and of people having different views. Instead, we should commit to building bipartisan consensus on the idea that governments of all flavours should use best practice to plan, select, fund and finance, deliver, and look after infrastructure. A robust system will make it politically untenable for Ministers to just go out and announce unfunded, inadequately planned projects. Where farcical projects have been stopped, like in the case of Auckland Light Rail, there are legitimate reasons for that. Equally, a robust system should make it punishing for a new government to stop or pause genuinely good, funded projects that make it through the rigours of the system. In my view, this is the missing piece – a credible and clear evidence-base for the public, the sector, and others to properly hold governments to account for their investment choices. We are fixing that. On establishing a national infrastructure agency, we established National Infrastructure Funding and Financing Limited (NIFFCo) on 1 December 2024 to be New Zealand’s shopfront for private capital in public infrastructure and the Government’s centre of expertise on funding and financing. To date, NIFFCo has delivered key transactions including arranging the Te Awa Lakes Infrastructure Funding and Financing (IFF) Act Levy, which will support 1,500 new homes in Hamilton. They also led the early monetisation of the Crown’s loans to Chorus, which we provided back in the day to accelerate the UFB rollout. This deal delivered $702 million in net proceeds to the Crown and allowed the Government to reinvest the funds into more of the infrastructure New Zealand needs – including Cambridge to Piarere, upgrades to hospitals, and hundreds of new classrooms. When we established NIFFCo, we also took the opportunity to clarify who does what in the infrastructure system. The Infrastructure Commission focuses on long-term strategy, the pipeline, and – now – assurance. Crown Infrastructure Delivery help deliver infrastructure projects for central government agencies that do delivery as BAU. And Treasury continues to be the steward of the Investment Management System and provides fiscal and economic advice. On improving infrastructure funding and financing, public infrastructure in New Zealand has historically been primarily funded by taxpayers or ratepayers. But our heavy reliance on this blunt approach has not served us well and has led to perverse outcomes including congestion, run-down assets, and the unresponsive provision of enabling infrastructure – contributing to unaffordable housing. At the end of 2024, the Government released a suite of frameworks and guidance – like Treasury’s Funding and Financing Framework and the refreshed PPP blueprint – to help government be a smarter owner and purchaser of infrastructure services. In the transport space alone, we have made significant progress on utilising a broader range of funding tools. We are making tolling rules more flexible so they can better support funding for new roads and are exploring the use of toll concessions. In addition, the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) can now use IFF Act Levies to fund projects; light electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids are now required to pay their fair share through road user charges (RUC); we are transitioning New Zealand’s entire vehicle fleet to RUC; and we are believed to be the first country in the world to pass law enabling time of use charging with completely unanimous cross-party support. This is fantastic progress in transport and there is more to come, which I will touch on later. When it comes to infrastructure to support housing growth, we have also pulled multiple levers. In Budget 2026, we set up the Incentives for Growth Fund so that all councils are rewarded for every single home consented. Just last month the IFF Amendment Bill passed into law, making it easier for developers, councils, and other infrastructure providers to use levies to help fund infrastructure. We are also progressing the replacement of the failed Development Contributions regime with a more flexible Development Levies system that will match our new flexible planning system. Arguably, the biggest improvement to the infrastructure system is fixing the Resource Management Act (RMA). Consenting takes too long, costs too much, and makes delivering the infrastructure we need too difficult. We are not just improving but are fundamentally transforming the consenting framework by replacing the RMA with two new pieces of legislation: The Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill. In fact, the main Amendment Papers to wrap it all up are being tabled today! Our new system will be effects-based, embrace standardised zoning, and be far more permissive and enabling while also protecting the environment. We knew that the new planning system would take time to bed in. So, in 2024, we established the Fast-track consents process, which has been incredibly successful. As of 14 August, 32 projects have been approved – representing tens of thousands of jobs and billions in investment, with more in the pipeline. There are eight new renewable energy projects approved through Fast-track which will add more than 990 megawatts of new generation capacity. That's more than five per cent of New Zealand's current generation capacity and enough to power approximately 322,000 households annually. The Port of Auckland Expansion, Green Steel project, and the two quarry expansions are fantastic examples of approved projects that will boost growth and productivity. The Port of Tauranga’s extension has received provisional approval, with a final decision due next month. Lastly, we have improved education and health infrastructure. When we came into government, the average cost of a classroom was about $1.2m, an astonishing amount of money for a classroom. We have gotten that down to around $620k. At the same time, we delivered more classrooms in 2024 than Labour did in 2023 – and even more again in 2025. To continue this good work, we have established the New Zealand School Property Agency, which will be focused on ensuring all Kiwi kids can learn in safe, warm, and dry buildings. The power of value for money is that we can deliver more infrastructure to more kiwis with what we have. We are also getting health infrastructure back on track including through our Building Hospitals Better approach. This means taking a staged approach to building and redeveloping hospitals; applying standardised designs; considering alternative financing and funding arrangements; and aligning the design of hospitals with wider digital, clinical, and service planning for health. Smaller build packages rather than one large mega project is enabling us to deliver healthcare faster to communities – which is what they want. All this work across the infrastructure system is not necessarily sexy, but it’s what’s needed to fix the basics and to set New Zealand up for years of prosperity into the 2030s and beyond. If that’s my legacy as Minister for Infrastructure, I’ll be happy. However, I am hungry to do more for New Zealand. So, what’s next? Auckland Strategic Motorway Plan Well, right now I’d like to announce the release of Auckland’s Strategic Motorway Plan. Auckland's motorway network carries around 1.5 million trips every day and is critical to keeping people and freight moving. It isn’t just critical to Auckland’s success – it’s critical to New Zealand’s. Freight and people must be able to travel efficiently, safely, and quickly, getting to where they need to go. This motorway plan being released today by NZTA sets out how we will approach the next 30 years as Auckland's population grows beyond two million. The plan sets out how smarter traffic management, targeted investment, and wider transport improvements will help keep the city moving. On optimising the existing network, we must make better use of the network we've already got. We can do this through smarter traffic management, quicker responses to crashes and breakdowns, small-scale improvements, and delivering time of use charging. On targeted investment, we need to be strategic in the way we increase capacity. This includes only adding extra capacity where bottlenecks are impacting efficiency, progressively delivering rapid transit to underserved areas like Manukau, closing critical gaps in active mode networks where they interact with motorways, and prioritising projects to increase capacity and address resilience risks. And finally, there are a range of wider system improvements that need to be made. Improving the wider transport system, including public transport capacity, rail network improvements, and local roads/active modes, so fewer trips need to use the motorway network. These are all very practical measures, most of which are already underway. This plan follows the Infrastructure Commission’s consistent advice that we need to focus more on what we have, rather than looking for the next shiny project. Don’t get me wrong, there are new projects the Auckland motorway network does need, like the Second Harbour Crossing. The Government is taking the advice of the Infrastructure Commission and other experts by committing to complete a Detailed Business Case (DBC) before making an announcement. Part of the reason why the wheel has been spinning on this project for decades is precisely because successive governments of all flavours have just gone out and announced just the built solution – without doing sufficient work to credibly lay out a plan for how it will be paid for or delivered. A DBC does not mean we are starting from scratch – it actually means the opposite. We will take all the good work done to date by NZTA like the options analysis, detailed due diligence, ground condition works, early funding and financing work, and more and put it into the DBC. We are taking the time to get it right and bring Auckland and the Opposition along with us. It is the right thing to do. Back to the Auckland Motorway plan. What this plan shows is the need for smart, cheap, targeted interventions on a network desperate for modernisation. We are releasing this plan alongside my friend Mayor of Auckland Wayne Brown. It is important that the Council and the Government are working in lockstep on the future of Auckland. It’s a good plan, and I hope you all read it. What’s next To finish, I’ll talk to you about what you can expect from a second term with a National-led government. First things first – what is in train is significant. We need to keep doing what we are doing: There’s also so much more. If I can impress anything on you all here today, it’s that these work programmes are critical to achieving genuine prosperity in New Zealand. National will keep the momentum going. [Party political content removed.] Conclusion To finish, I’d like to thank all of you in this room for coming along the journey with me for the past three years as Infrastructure Minister. I’ve learned a lot and I think it’s safe to say, I threw the kitchen sink at the system. In my view, achieving genuine economic prosperity – the great challenge facing this country – depends on infrastructure that meets our needs, is good value for money, and is deliverable. It’s the foundation everything else is built on. I want kiwis to be free, ambitious, and have access to abundant opportunities – knowing they are backed by an equally enterprising nation. I want all of us to enjoy better lives. I truly believe that our country, at the bottom of the world, can choose to be wealthy, and modern, and prosperous. That’s why I’m in politics. Thank you.