Prime Minister Christopher Luxon raised eyebrows when he pointed to New South Wales and Victoria as examples New Zealand should learn from on infrastructure development. His comments, made during a visit to Australia, highlighted a frustration shared by many in the construction and engineering sector: New Zealand’s infrastructure delivery is slower, more expensive, and less predictable than comparable countries.
Luxon also flagged that a bipartisan approach to infrastructure — where long-term projects have cross-party political support regardless of election cycles — would provide the stability that private investors and construction firms need to commit to the sector.
Why Bipartisanship Matters for Infrastructure
Major infrastructure projects take 10 to 20 years from planning to completion. A motorway extension, a hospital, a port upgrade — these don’t fit within single electoral cycles. When political support is conditional on which party is in government, projects get cancelled or redesigned mid-stream, wasting sunk costs and destroying confidence in the country’s ability to deliver.
Australia has struggled with this too — the Victorian Suburban Rail Loop being a recent example of a major project with contested political support — but at the state level, some jurisdictions have developed infrastructure pipelines that attract private investment precisely because of their long-term stability.
Lessons from Europe
Several European countries offer models worth examining. The Netherlands manages major flood protection and transport infrastructure through cross-government agreements that survive changes in national government. Germany’s Autobahn network is maintained under a federal framework that insulates it from short-term political pressures. The UK’s National Infrastructure Commission provides independent long-term planning advice that governments of both parties have generally accepted.
Common to all of these models is a separation between the politics of whether to invest in infrastructure and the technical question of what infrastructure to build. New Zealand’s National Infrastructure Commission and the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act are steps in this direction — but the culture of bipartisan commitment remains underdeveloped.
What the Industry Wants
Construction and engineering firms are clear about what they need: a long-term, committed pipeline of infrastructure work that allows them to invest in the plant, people, and systems required to deliver it. Feast-and-famine cycles — where work rushes in and then dries up as governments change — make it impossible to build sustainable capability. The irony is that the countries with the most predictable pipelines also tend to get the best prices, because contractors don’t need to price in programme risk.