High Spend, Low Returns
New Zealand ranks in the top ten percent of OECD countries for infrastructure spending relative to GDP. Despite that, returns on infrastructure investment are among the lowest in the OECD. The gap between spending and outcomes is not a funding problem — it is a planning, delivery, and maintenance problem. The National Infrastructure Plan, currently in development, is intended to address all three.
Nick Leggett, CEO of Infrastructure New Zealand, has described the plan as “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reset how we approach infrastructure.” The language is justified. New Zealand has not had a nationally coordinated infrastructure planning framework that spans planning, construction, and asset management across a 30-year horizon. The absence of one has produced the conditions the sector is familiar with: projects planned in isolation, inconsistent funding across electoral cycles, assets maintained to failure rather than to performance standards.
Three Priority Reform Areas
The plan addresses three long-standing structural problems:
- Strategic maintenance: prioritising the performance of existing infrastructure before funding new construction, with an emphasis on whole-of-life asset management rather than minimum-cost maintenance
- Streamlined planning and consenting: reducing the time and cost of moving new infrastructure from decision to delivery, with specific focus on eliminating duplication in consenting processes
- Predictable project pipelines: establishing stable, long-horizon project programmes that give the construction industry confidence to invest in people, equipment, and capacity without fearing programme cancellations at the next budget cycle
The Mixed Signals Problem
One of the plan’s most important potential contributions is reducing the cost of policy uncertainty. Mixed or inconsistent signals from government — projects funded, then defunded, then refunded — impose real costs on the construction sector. Every time a major project is cancelled or deferred, the firms that invested in capability for that project bear losses. Those losses accumulate into higher contingency pricing and reduced willingness to invest ahead of confirmed work. Cross-political alignment on infrastructure priorities would reduce this friction significantly.
Who Should Engage
Infrastructure New Zealand and Te Waihanga have both emphasised that the consultation process is open to broad participation — not just large construction firms and government agencies, but also SMEs, councils, and trades professionals. The plan will be more durable and more practical if it reflects the full range of experience in the sector, including the perspective of the subcontractors and tradespeople who deliver the work on the ground. The consultation window represents a genuine opportunity to shape a framework that will influence infrastructure investment for a generation.
