Infrastructure crash-course for fast-track four

The Government is bolstering the Infrastructure Commission as it attempts to provide certainty, and remove partisan politics, from infrastructure planning.
The big reveal of the Government’s promised Infrastructure Agency is just weeks away.
On Thursday, the fast-track four – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Infrastructure and Housing Minister Chris Bishop, Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown and Regional Development and Resources Minister Shane Jones – attended a series of meetings in Sydney.
The four – who may soon hold extraordinary powers to green-light projects under the proposed fast-track legislation – met with the state premier, treasurer, government infrastructure agency, and former premiers and infrastructure ministers about how Australia has planned and delivered A$116 billion (NZD$128b) in the past decade.
Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop told Newsroom the Government had a series of big announcements coming up, with news on his new infrastructure agency coming in the next few weeks.
In May, Bishop received advice on the agency and the state of the country’s infrastructure woes from former Cabinet minister Steven Joyce. The infrastructure minister wouldn’t go into detail about his plans for the agency but reiterated that it would be responsible for securing funding.
Budget 2024 included $5 million for designing and establishing the new agency, which is supposed to be up and running by February next year.
In May, ASB estimated New Zealand’s infrastructure deficit could total $1 trillion, and Luxon said the Government couldn’t fund all of that out of the Government coffers. That meant looking to private money – from New Zealand and overseas.
But in order to deliver major infrastructure projects, particularly in transport and renewable energy, New Zealand also needed to change its regulatory framework and monitoring.
Bishop was already working with the existing Infrastructure Commission to bolster the back-office support, monitoring and independent evaluation of infrastructure projects, but the minister and Prime Minister suggested the commission would be taking on a greater role, similar to that of New South Wales’ infrastructure agency.
Bishop travelled to Sydney ahead of the Prime Minister and his fellow ministers, to meet with counterparts on Wednesday.
And on Thursday, Luxon said New Zealand needed a “rolling pipeline” of projects to give Kiwis – and investors – certainty.
“We tend to nudge into one project; we get it completed, and then we look around and say: ‘what’s coming next?’”
Luxon said the fast-track four had been playing close attention to Infrastructure New South Wales, the state agency responsible for providing independent advice to assist the government in identifying and prioritising the delivery of critical public infrastructure.
The independent agency, established in 2011, was set up to plan and oversee a wide-ranging upgrade of the state’s infrastructure. One of its first major tasks was to deliver a 20-year State Infrastructure Strategy, which was delivered in September 2012.  Bishop has promised a 30-year plan.
Infrastructure NSW chair Graham Bradley said bipartisanship was essential in order to get multi-billion-dollar plans across the line.
“It’s very expensive to stop-start projects,” he said.
This was an approach Luxon said he wanted to take.
“I think the challenge in New Zealand is you get a change in political cycle or economic cycle, and you get on-off, on-off, on-off, and nothing’s happening,” Luxon said.
Meanwhile, Bishop said they were working on creating a list of priority infrastructure projects, which had been independently verified by experts, in order to get buy-in from political parties, whether they were in government or opposition.
But building consensus across the political spectrum on massive infrastructure projects – particularly those that blow out the estimated costs and delivery dates – is easier said than done.
The myriad cancelled business cases and plans for the second Auckland harbour crossing, and the cancelled Auckland Light Rail, Let’s Get Wellington Moving, and Cook Strait ferry projects, are high-profile examples of politicians’ inability – or unwillingness – to work across the aisle.
But Infrastructure New South Wales’ Graham Bradley said it didn’t need to be that way. The state had managed to get political consensus, and therefore certainty, on major transport and housing projects.
While Australia had also experienced cost blowouts and delivery delays, Bradley said it helped that the agency had the ability to give early warning of any issues through its independent monitoring service.
And establishing broad support at the outset – thanks partially to its business case evaluations – helped keep everyone onboard, even if projects did hit snags.
During the past decade, New South Wales has implemented complex and large-scale infrastructure projects, such as the Sydney Metro, Sydney Light Rail, second Sydney Harbour Tunnel and the West Connex toll road and tunnel network.  
The state’s approach to infrastructure funding and procurement had changed in recent years, offering a range of models for Luxon’s Government to consider.
As part of this infrastructure crash-course, Luxon and his ministers spoke to their Australian counterparts about public-private partnerships (PPPs) in big projects, and tried to build on the relationship already established with potential investors.
“Australia is our most important economic partner, with it our biggest investor and two-way trade worth more than $31 billion last year. We want to make it even easier to do business across the Tasman,” Luxon said.
However, the experience across the ditch shows even New Zealand’s big brother faces issues with delivery.
For example, the Sydney Metro – Australia’s largest infrastructure project – has faced cost blowouts from the initial AUD$12 billion ($13b) to more than AUD$25b ($27b), delays in delivery, and a government-commissioned review to get to the bottom of the issues.
Luxon visited the construction site of the Sydney Metro Hunter St Station, and walked down into its turnback tunnel, to better understand the scale of the project and the delivery timeline.
When completed, the west line would cover 24 kilometres underground, and cross under the harbour four times.
The metro project was due to open in 2032, 100 years after the Sydney Harbour Bridge changed the face of the city’s transport infrastructure.
When asked about the relevance of the project to New Zealand, and whether his government had anything of this scale in the pipeline, Luxon referenced the need for major waterworks and the 17 roads of national significance. He also mentioned plans to build more renewable energy infrastructure.
Earlier in the day, Luxon met with Premier Christopher Minns, where he stressed the connections between New South Wales and New Zealand, with 120,000 Kiwis living in the state.
“For us it’s pretty straight-forward, we have very, very strong people-to-people connections. This is a place I lived in for five years, my son was born here, I love this country and I love this city.”
The Prime Minister spoke of his “really big desire” to deepen the relationship at a leader-to-leader and government-to-government level.
“Some of the challenges you’re dealing with are the same challenges we’re dealing with,” Luxon said to the New South Wales leader. 
“When we look at large-scale infrastructure projects, which we have a massive infrastructure deficit to deal with at home. We’re also at the same time dealing with huge amounts of public debt, that’s been run up, and how we deal with all of that.”