SEPTEMBER 14 2019 LISTENER 13
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Commissioner, Prime Minister’s Chief Science
Adviser and so on. These have no direct power, but
having stocked them with the best experts available,
governments look dodgy when they ignore them.
The commission’s headline task is a 30-year
national infrastructure plan. But before it can order
its first lot of hard hats and neon vests for that big
announcement, it has a short-term emergency to
adjudicate: the construction industry is downsizing
at the very time the fiscal planets have aligned to
make big infrastructure funding most achievable.
Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr has become a
one-man infomercial for the opportunities of our
nearly free money: “SEND MONEY NOW!!!”
ONCE BITTEN
Yet construction’s snail-horn-retraction is a
perfectly rational response to years of political
push-me-pull-you over which bit of what project
to action next. The Treasury tried to be helpful this
year, listing a “pipeline” of big projects for firms to
set their sights on. But of the 174, only a quarter
have a firm start date.
Even if a construction firm could nerve itself
to gear up despite the uncertainties, it can’t get
enough labour domestically. As the horticulture
sector has found, officialdom’s mindset about
temporary imported labour is: get
used to shortages, we’re rationing
guest workers and tough cheese if
that means rotting crops and stalled
infrastructure.
Besides the need to put a bomb
under our labour responsiveness,
the commission has climate change
to contend with. It’s estimated $2.
billion-$14 billion of infrastructure
will be destroyed by rising sea levels
in coming decades. Just a few years
ago, politicians were dying in ditches
to get the Transmission Gully link
built along Wellington’s coast instead
of inland. Bollard was instrumental
in getting New Zealand through
the global financial crisis, but that’s
Pooh-sticks compared with negotiat-
ing such political stupidity.
We could also hope for some bold
thinking from Bollard’s board. Imag-
ine, despite the blistering expense of
an all-new track, what a super-high-
speed rail link from Auckland to
Hamilton and even Tauranga could
do for Auckland’s housing squeeze,
congestion and labour shortages, and
the overall economy. Or should we
bank on rail becoming obsolete and
limit our spending on it now so as
to be nimble for a self-drive electric-
transport future?
Sadly, it’s outside the commission’s
remit to tell us which of the myriad
already-announced projects is real,
as opposed to consisting merely of a
press conference and balloons. But it
will be reassuring to have an influen-
tial authority that does not, like the
Government, regard the Puhinui Sta-
tion Interchange’s mooted 10-minute
airport bus service (Hamilton link not
included) as the jewel in the crown of
our infrastructure. l
It’s estimated $2.
billion-$14 billion
of infrastructure
will be destroyed by
rising sea levels.