Government sets out its wares for global infrastructure investors
A two-day summit aimed at wooing some of the world's most powerful financial institutions kicks off in Auckland today.
Mōrena, and welcome to The Bulletin for Thursday, March 13.
In today’s edition: NZME investor says concerns are misplaced; Majority of voters support a return to old school lunches; Winston Peters reacts angrily to suggestion of hypocrisy on ‘woke’ staffing practices. But first, the government is thinking big about infrastructure in New Zealand, and they hope overseas investors will feel the same.
Global financial firms descend on Auckland for government summit
Today marks the kick-off of the government’s two-day NZ Infrastructure Investment Summit, bringing together around 100 international investors, infrastructure experts and government officials in Auckland. Representatives from major financial institutions including pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and major banks will be presented with the government’s “ambitious pipeline of projects” in fields such as transport, health, courts and education. As Luke Malpass notes in The Post (paywalled), “Labour’s finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds will also be speaking on infrastructure as the Government seeks to impress upon investors that, despite differences in political stripes, investment is welcome in New Zealand.”
Iwi representatives will also attend to highlight upcoming investment opportunities in the Māori economy. For them, “the stakes go beyond economic growth,” writes Liam Rātana this morning on The Spinoff. “They are looking at what the infrastructure pipeline can offer Māori – and whether they will be treated as genuine investment partners or simply stakeholders with interests to be managed.” Rātana talks to some of those attending about what they hope to achieve, and why they’re going in with “eyes wide open”.
Pushing PPPs
The concept at the heart of the summit is public-private partnerships, or PPPs. As Oliver Lewis explains in Businessdesk (paywalled), in a PPP, “the private sector partner designs, finances, builds and manages a public asset for a contracted period; the Government makes ongoing availability payments, and the asset returns to public control at the end of the contract period.” Only four PPPs are ready to be presented to investors at the summit, of which the largest by far is the Northland expressway. NZTA says that project may require more than $10 billion in investment, Lewis reports, which is “eight times as much as the $1.25b cost to build Transmission Gully (although the comparison doesn’t take into account inflation and other factors)”.
What the summit hopes to achieve
“The NZ Infrastructure Investment Summit is about saying to the world that we are ready to do business, ready for investment – and ready for jobs and growth,” writes infrastructure minister Chris Bishop in the Herald. The international investors attending this week collectively manage funds and assets worth around $6 trillion, Bishop says, and the government hopes it can tempt them to spend some of that on infrastructure projects here.
In the Conversation, construction expert John Tookey warns that the process is a bit more complex than the government’s spin would suggest. As we become increasingly reliant on PPPs to fund infrastructure, “the real question is whether New Zealanders are comfortable with the dynamics of long-term contracts with substantial service charges that will last decades,” he writes. “Because today’s politicians will be writing contracts our grandchildren will still be bound by.”
Is that all there is?
Having brought a glittering array of global investors to NZ – at their own cost, as the government is keen to emphasise – it would seem less than ideal that only a handful of PPP options are ready to be presented at the summit. Along with the Northland expressway, the near-term PPPs on offer include prison, courts and army accommodation projects, but these “seem unlikely to meet the minimum size requirements for funders”, Tookey says.
Writing in the NZ Herald, Matthew Hooton is scathing about the event’s potential to be another “ultimately embarrassing prime ministerial summit”. “We’d all better hope BusinessDesk somehow has [the list of projects] terribly wrong because if that’s all New Zealand has to offer major allocators of global capital after 16-hour flights from New York or Dubai, our country will forever be blacklisted as a destination for their funds,” he writes.
“Not even the 24km expressway would meet most funds’ minimum investment thresholds for construction projects and it isn’t clear these are genuine PPPs anyway, but rather slightly more elaborate construction contracts.” Defending the government’s offer, Bishop says attendees will be “interested in the future pipeline as evidence that New Zealand is serious about infrastructure…. It’s not just about the short-term or quick fixes.”
Have thoughts? Join the conversation in the comments.
The Spinoff is proud to support Neil Finn’s Infinity Session – win tickets!
The session, featuring Neil Finn, Vera Ellen, LEAO, Victoria Kelly and Simon O’Neill, complete with a nine-piece string section with arrangements by Victoria Kelly will be livestreamed here.
Win 2 x tickets to the live event at Roundhead Studios in Auckland, Monday, March 17.
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Entries close on Friday 14th March.
NZME investor says concerns are misplaced
NZ-based Canadian billionaire Jim Grenon says that while editorial content is a “side issue” to his push for a new board at NZME, he’s hoping the changes will improve on journalism with "an emphasis on factual accuracy, less selling of the writer's opinion and appealing to a wider political spectrum", reports RNZ’s Susan Edmunds. The journalists’ union, E Tu, says it’s concerned that the “incredibly unhealthy” pattern of billionaires using their resources to control media narratives could be repeated at the NZ Herald. Grenon says that’s a reach. “No one at the union knows anything about me and is just speculating, based on very little information. Wealthy people are not all alike and come from all spectrums, including moderate.” Grenon was previously involved in the Centrist, a news aggregator with “very specific preoccupations around trans rights, treaty issues and particularly vaccine injury and efficacy,” says The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive.
Majority of voters support a return to old school lunches
Two thirds of voters have lost faith in the government’s new school lunches programme, according to polling reported by Stuff’s Glen McConnell. Almost as many – 60% – want the old system back. The Talbot Mills poll found that even government supporters don’t think the new school lunch programme is working. Act leader David Seymour, who is spearheading the change, said it was “difficult to poll on issues this specific” and that Act’s own focus groups found “a whole spectrum of views” on the issue.
Click and Collect
Winston Peters responded angrily when asked how he squares NZ First’s “anti-woke hiring” bill with the party’s own constitution that requires “genders, social groups, ages and ethnic groups” to be considered when ranking list MPs. (Stuff)
Four people have been charged over the Auckland Pride Festival protest at Te Atatū Community Centre. (RNZ)
Labour MP Peeni Henare has apologised for leaving his seat, but not for performing a haka in parliament to protest the Treaty Principles Bill last year. (Newsroom)
A last-minute funding lifeline has bought time for 40 science roles at soon-to-close Callaghan Innovation. (NZ Herald)
The Desert Road will re-open on Friday after a two-month closure for major roadworks. (RNZ)
Donald Trump’s global tariffs on steel and aluminium imports have taken effect with “with no exceptions or exemptions”. (The Guardian)
Toby Manhire introduces Marco Rubio and what Winston Peters can learn from their Washington meeting.. For The Spinoff Books Confessional, Nafanua Percell Kersel shares her favourite books and explains why everyone should read out loud. Claire Mabey flips through the just-released Auckland Writers Festival programme. Toby Manhire interviews Neil Finn about the ridiculous idea he's turning into a musical colossus. For Echo Chamber, Lyric Waiwiri-Smith recaps a day in the House with Christopher Luxon and his merry band of frickin' lame-os.
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Re NZME, Fox reassures chickens that him owning and running their coop will be fine...
10 billion dollars for a 24 km expressway that nobody needs. How f***ing stupid. We can't afford to look after our old and our I'll, we can't afford to give children a decent lunch, cooked on site, we can't afford to build decent housing, we can't afford to look after our water and wildlife, we don't think people deserve a living wage, but we are falling over ourselves, trying to get investors (half of whom are probably involved in fossil fuels) not to invest in any of the above, but to build a bloody road, to kill more.animals and people, pump more carbon into the atmosphere and generally to make life worse. The sooner this government gets the boot, the better.