Infrastructure sector’s top issues and priorities for the new Government

Hamish Glenn, Policy Director at Infrastructure New Zealand says the infrastructure sector remains hopeful that the Government can deliver on its vision for New Zealand, but quick action on strategy, planning, skills and funding commitment is required.Infrastructure New Zealand’s ReBuilding Nations Symposium brought together over 800 infrastructure industry leaders across two days to examine how the country can ‘Build Back Better’. In each session, polls were run with the support of Technology Sponsor Beca to gauge industry priorities and concerns."The clear message from the sector was that the Government must move quickly to demonstrate how it is going to achieve its priorities.""While four out of five respondents felt somewhat or very confident that New Zealand’s leadership has a clear vision for action in our post-COVID recovery, half were not very or not at all confident that the country can deliver its infrastructure pipeline. "“Over 40% of attendees said that a lack of strategy and planning would hamper our future development. This was followed with equal concern about lack of capability, capacity, and skills and insufficient funding and financing.In response, Infrastructure New Zealand has released six Policy Priorities for addressing the challenges in our infrastructure system and accelerating the shift from talking to action:

1. Establish a National Vision with National Strategic Outcomes
2. Build an Infrastructure Strategy designed to achieve the outcomes
3. Reform our planning system to align outcomes with spatial planning, funding, and governance
4. Develop the skills and human capital needed to deliver the infrastructure pipeline
5. Commit funding using incentives, price signals, private capital, and the beneficiary pays wherever possible
6. Revise governance to ensure organisations charged with infrastructure delivery have the scale, capacity, capability and desire to implement.

To see a copy of Infrastructure New Zealand’s latest report on how the Government can integrate planning and investment to achieve its National Vision, click here.