2024 will be make or break for New Zealand infrastructure

Roads, pipes, houses, hospitals: our infrastructure challenges are almost overwhelming in their size and scale. Will the government's new approach make a difference?

Mōrena, and welcome to The Bulletin for Monday, December 11, by Catherine McGregor. Presented in partnership with Z Energy.

In today’s edition: Rising Te Pāti Māori stars to give maiden speeches tomorrow; NZ students score worst in developed world on classroom behaviour survey; $2 billion for mental health has apparently done little to help. But first, is outside investment the answer to New Zealand’s mounting infrastructure deficit?

A challenge of massive proportions

Early on Sunday afternoon, water was finally turned back on in the Lower Hutt suburb of Maungaraki . Residents had been without water for 17 hours due to a burst water pipe. With no showers to take or tea and coffee to drink, some of them likely turned to the latest Sunday Star-Times to pass the time. Its cover story: the abysmal state of New Zealand’s infrastructure. Urgent billion-dollar investment is needed in sectors including land transport, energy generation, house building, tourism infrastructure and of course, our failing freshwater, stormwater and wastewater systems – the latter all the harder to solve now that Three Waters is no more. The problems are particularly acute in seismically-challenged Wellington, which is facing water shortages this summer and the prospect of spending $1b a year to fix the pipes. Yesterday’s SST twisted the knife further with another story headlined ‘Sorry Wellington: things could get worse and they probably will’, about how the threatened public sector purge will affect the capital’s economy.  

Regions have reason to hope

The regions are suffering too, but for them the future seems a little brighter. National has signalled that many of its infrastructure efforts will be focused outside of the main cities, starting with the $1.2b Regional Infrastructure Fund (RIF) agreed to in its coalition deal with NZ First. For all intents and purposes it’s a rebranded Provincial Growth Fund, but new infrastructure minister Chris Bishop says that unlike its predecessor – which he relentlessly attacked while in opposition – the RIF won’t be a "slush fund" for NZ First’s pet projects. In BusinessDesk (paywalled), parliamentarian-turned-consultant David Cunliffe and two of his partners write that the change of government represents “a new period of opportunity for NZ’s regions”. Helped along by the new infrastructure agency the government is promising to establish, the provinces can look forward to faster delivery and more accountability from central government, they write. 

Third-party funding a lifeline for hospital builds

It all sounds good, but it’s still not clear where all the investment is going to come from. The government has signalled that it will be looking for third-party funding to make up the shortfall, with the National-Act coalition deal committing the government to investigate “build and lease-back arrangements” for new hospitals. Health minister Shane Reti tells RNZ he’s looking at the major hospital infrastructure builds currently underway, “and what funding commitments have been made to date." Te Whatu Ora’s latest annual report found that 18% of major projects were rated "red", the worst category, and "may require a change in scope or funding to proceed". Engineering consultant David Norman has a good overview of how third-party infrastructure funding works, and its pros and cons. “What we do know is this: we simply cannot continue to let our infrastructure shortfall go untreated the way we have for decades,” Norman writes. “That would be terminal.”

Mega ferry project set to cost mega bucks

Back in Wellington, work is progressing on the port infrastructure to serve the two new hybrid “mega ferries” scheduled to arrive in 2026. The iReX (Inter-island Resilience Connection) ferries are designed specifically for the strait and will increase total Interislander passenger capacity by 50%, truck capacity by 40% and rail capacity by almost 300%. It’s going to cost, however – far more than $1.45b, the latest publicly available cost estimate for both the ferries and portside infrastructure. Finance minister Nicola Willis is so concerned about the situation that she met with KiwiRail to discuss the budget blow out before even being sworn in, reports Thomas Coughlan at the Herald. “The financial situation of this project is extremely troubling,” she said.

Te Huka Mātauraka: a space for Māori to thrive at the University of Otago

Nestled in a whare at the heart of campus, Te Huka Mātauraka is an iwi-diverse whānau packed with mātua and whāea dedicated to serving tauria Māori by ensuring they have access to a welcoming, calm space throughout their academic hikoi. Kaituitui Jeremy Wara (Waikato/Tainui) says tauira often worry that they aren't "Māori enough" to access the support offered by the centre, but if you whakapapa Māori, Te Huka Mātauraka is available to you.

Keen to join the whānau? Pop in and say kia ora today.

Rising Te Pāti Māori stars to give maiden speeches tomorrow

Stuff has a useful rundown of the big political stories to look out for this week, including maiden speeches by young Te Pāti Māori MPs Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke and Takuta Ferris on Tuesday. Two more new Māori Party MPs will speak on Thursday, along with four new NZ First MPs; National MP Tim Costley will give his maiden speech tomorrow. Also on the agenda in the House this week are starting work on the repeal of the Fair Pay Agreements law and reinstatement of 90 day workplace trials, and new legislation to return the Reserve Bank to a single mandate of lowering inflation. Expect more debate on the controversial u-turn on smokefree laws and the goverment’s plan to reopen our seas to oil and gas exploration.

NZ students score worst in developed world on classroom behaviour survey

An OECD survey of 15 year olds – part of the the PISA study whose maths results made waves last week – found that New Zealand scored worst among developed countries for classroom behaviour, and among the worst of all 81 participating nations and territories. The scores, collated from students’ own reports on classroom experiences, may suggest NZ high school students are some of the worst-behaved in the world – or, as RNZ points out, may simply mean NZ students are more willing to call out bad behaviour. The report also showed that higher levels of disruption were associated with lower scores in the PISA maths test. “New Zealand students who reported the best-behaved classes scored an average 512 points while those in the worst-behaved scored 468 points, a difference equivalent to more than two years of learning,” education correspondent John Gerritsen writes.

How did $2b for mental health change so little?

The nearly $2 billion investment in mental healthcare included in the 2019 wellbeing budget has bought few improvements, according to an in-depth report by RNZ’s Anusha Bradley. “It is now harder than ever to see a counsellor or psychologist, even privately. Workforce shortages continue to cripple existing services and hamper the roll out of new ones,” Bradley writes, adding that “in several regions young people in crisis are having to wait twice as long as they did five years ago to see a specialist mental health service”. Her multi-part investigation into what went wrong starts today with a look at how that historic $2b investment was spent, where critics including Mental Health Foundation head Shaun Robinson say it went wrong, and why we know so little about its overall effectiveness. Former health minister Andrew Little, who was primarily responsible for the implementation of the funding, says critics are discounting the massive spanner in the works that was the Covid pandemic and that he stands by the decisions made at the time.

Click and Collect

• The era of free Covid jabs for all may be coming to an end.

• United’s San Francisco-Christchurch flight – the first direct route between the US and the South Island in 17 years – is up and running.

• How does the graph of NZ house prices pre- and post-Covid compare to other countries?

• An OIA has revealed the impassioned discussions leading up to Auckland Museum’s decision to light up for Israel following the October 7 attacks.

  Feeling clever? Click here to play 1Q, Aotearoa’s newest, shortest daily quiz.

Right now on The Spinoff

Conspiracy theorists voted for Winston Peters – and now they're refusing to leave him alone, writes Toby Manhire. Joel MacManus reports on the post-Xero generation of Wellington financial startups. Anika Moa tells us about her most memorable TV, including After the Party and Paul Holmes. Alex Casey reveals the story behind the iconic “Togs, togs, undies” ad. YouTube stars Viva La Dirt League tell Sam Brooks about their new multi-million dollar studio. And Marianne Schultz writes about facing the limitations of dancing into the ‘sunset years’ of her life.

Sporting snippets

• Ongoing injuries have forced Nick Kyrgios to withdraw from the Australian Open for the second year running.

• The Black Ferns have taken bronze in the World Rugby Sevens after beating the US 19-7. The men’s team finished fifth.

Got some feedback about The Bulletin, or anything in the news? Get in touch with me at thebulletin@thespinoff.co.nz.

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