Andrew Dickens: The grownups are in charge of infrastructure

Good Lord. Parliamentarians are actually doing something we've asked for.

They've come up with an Infrastructure Plan for the next 30 years and more remarkably it has rare cross party backing.

It was produced independently by the Infrastructure Commission.

Labour and the Greens have called it a long-term, non-partisan blueprint for fixing decades of inconsistent infrastructure decisions.

Here's our problem. New Zealand spends heavily on infrastructure but ranks poorly on efficiency and asset management.

Minister Chris Bishop says the government is already acting on all 10 priority areas, including reviewing transport funding, legislating long-term investment plans, improving national infrastructure data, and strengthening public-sector project leadership.

Further work is needed on predictable funding signals, multi-year budgeting, and coordinated workforce planning, with Treasury and MBIE to report back in 2027.

But finally, we are attacking the stop start nature of developing this country and that will make it quicker, more efficient and most importantly cheaper.

and finally, the so called grownups in charge of the country are being grown up and ditching infrastructure as a way to define themselves politically.

Nick Leggett from the Infrastructure Commission on this before 6.

I had a mate who was a tunneller who did the Victoria Park tunnel.

Then he left New Zealand until the Waterview tunnel started and then he left New Zealand again.

And I remember at a barbecue him saying that if we just got all our tunnelling projects sorted and, in a row, so the experience could move from one job to the next than the country would save billions.

Every project carries the coast of start-up operations. and it's holding us back.

Andrew Dickens is a broadcaster with Newstalk ZB. - where this article was sourced.