The public, not politicians, hold the key to unlocking the infrastructure crisis

By Phil O’Reilly

First published on the The Post.

There has been a lot of talk recently about the need to create a shared long-term vision to resolve New Zealand’s infrastructure deficit.

That is a laudable aim but it’s never going to happen. Infrastructure is such a valuable political commodity that politicians can’t help but put their own political spin on whatever outcome they think will garner them more votes.

This politicisation of infrastructure, often based on purely ideological grounds, is one of the prime reasons why we have such a lack of consensus around the types of infrastructure that we build and how it will be paid for.

The problem is probably worst when it comes to roads. The last Labour-led government did not commence construction on a single new major highway in their six years in office. The current government wants to start 15.

Neither of those approaches is conducive to certainty. The needs of businesses and communities are ill-served if we continue this stop start thinking around infrastructure spend, seesawing from demonising roads to idolising them.

So, what might we do to build more balanced, long-term consensus around infrastructure provision?

To my mind this is about putting pressure on the politicians and their ideologies rather than thinking that somehow magically they will all agree on a way ahead.

We need to bring the public more into the game, engaging it more in the pros and cons of different options and letting communities see the benefits and challenges of infrastructure provision themselves. Then we might all hold our politicians to account more effectively.

Here are some ways I think we could do that.

First, get information in front of the public – consistently and constructively. What really is the scale of our infrastructure deficit, where is it and what impact will it have?

While we don’t need to catastrophise, we can point out realities in a way people can understand. There are far too many reports published, containing impossibly large numbers that non-experts find hard to grapple with, written by groups with an obvious self-interest in a particular outcome. Information about infrastructure needs should be made much more accessible for the average person to understand so that they can make trade-offs in their own mind.

And we need to get away from local council consultation that is anything but. Far too often consultation feels like little more than a sham, with predictable results in terms of disengagement from politics and the decision-making process. The laughably named “Let’s Get Wellington Moving” is a classic example of this.

We need to power up independent bodies such as the Infrastructure Commission. We need to demand better and clearer reporting from Treasury and the likes of the Ministry of Transport. We need to go back to having statutory boards at the likes of NZTA being properly held to account for their independence and performance rather than successive ministers getting more and more into the detail, disempowering the very people they appointed to do a proper job.

We need to get more voices engaged – business organisations, banks, industry bodies, community groups and international benchmarking agencies like the OECD. All have a role in educating us and comparing the various options.

We need to make infrastructure cheaper. It turns out that New Zealand doesn’t underspend on infrastructure as much as we all think. The Infrastructure Commission has found that New Zealand is in the top 20% of OECD economies on infrastructure spending (on a per capita basis), but in terms of spending it efficiently, we are in the bottom 10%.

We could do a lot more with exactly the same amount of money if we were to make the spend more efficient, tied to a longer term, balanced approach to infrastructure planning.

Businesses have long called for RMA reform for this very purpose. Our planning rules need to enable infrastructure to be consented, built and utilised much more efficiently.

But this is also about making sure that we deploy the right plant and equipment. The right skills - across the border if necessary - and the right building materials at globally competitive prices.

It’s about making sure that our infrastructure procurement is world class. Often it is not. And that a pipeline of infrastructure provision exists so that industry has confidence about investing in equipment and know-how for the long run.

We need to show how different funding mechanisms for infrastructure work and why. If you have ever been to Sydney or Melbourne you will know what good infrastructure feels like and that it costs, because you are paying tolls on many of the roads that you use.

It is ridiculous that we are not using the same kinds of funding tools in New Zealand that every other like economy uses. Tolls, public private partnerships, value uplift on council rates and so on.

It is gratifying that this current Government is doing some proper work in this space for the first time, and it is equally gratifying that opposition spokespeople have expressed interest in at least some of them. But in the absence of public pressure and support we will simply go back to our old ideological corners soon enough.

Finally, we need to explain the benefits of infrastructure to people in the context of community prosperity.

Far too often we talk about economic efficiency alone, or get into arcane detail about some particular metric. We need to engage communities more - in language that they can understand - about what infrastructure means to them and why it is worth paying for.

I don’t trust the politicians to get this right by themselves. We need to ensure the public is better informed and engaged, and puts pressure on politicians to align more around the big issues for New Zealand for the long term.

We need to put more power in the hands of the people.