Politicians across party lines call for end to stop-start infrastructure investment

Politicians across party lines are calling for an end to stop-start infrastructure investment.

Moderated by Rebecca Wright, Labour, National, the Greens, NZ First and ACT met Thursday night for the Big Infrastructure Debate.

The event was sponsored by Engineering NZ.

"We're really excited because we're going to have New Zealand's leading politicians discussing infrastructure and the importance of engineering to New Zealand," said its chief excutive, Dr Richard Templer.

"So they're going to be on the record saying what they are going to do for engineering and infrastructure for New Zealand for the next three years."

He said stop-start investment in infrastructure had cost the country billions in lost productivity.

"So we want to see parties to committing to a long-run infrastructure investment, to following the recommendations of the Infrastructure Commission, to investing 70 to 80 percent in renewables and maintenance, making sensible infrastructure investments so that the whole country can become more productive and a better place to live," he said.

He said infrastructure impacted every aspect of daily life: from the water you use to shower to commuting into work.

And the politicians were consistent and unanimous in wanting to see more investment in infrastructure.

Several attendees pouring out of the Wellington's National Library told RNZ it was good to see so much consensus across party lines.

Labour's Kieran McAnulty said a change in leadership did not need to change the approach to infrastructure.

"We're not saying this because we think we might get some votes out of this. We're saying this because we're taking this very seriously," he said.

He called for prioritising infrastructure without politicising it.

As an example, he pointed to a recent congestion charge law - which was unanimously passed - after Bishop said he worried about it being actually implemented.

"I'm sure we can commit to it and then if our parties move away from it - then we're on the hook," he pledged.

But despite a congenial atmosphere, an unresolved sticking point remained: where would funding for the projects come from?

Most agreed that high infrastructure costs were an obstacle.

New Zealand First's Shane Jones asked whether perhaps there should be more of a focus on maintenance and repair.

"These costs are just getting increasingly difficult both to justify and to sell to the public," he said.

ACT's Simon Court hit out at "gold-plating" in public works.

"A bridge that gets built - it's a basic bridge - is better than a perfect bridge that never gets built," he added.

Julie Anne Genter from the Greens said the logic was "music to my ears", as she had been calling for more basic projects for years.

But her solution to high costs was to call on central government to support local councils with more funding and more affordable public transport.

She also argued more local control over funds to shape a community's infrastructure according to its needs.

Genter said it was especially an issue when councils were required to fund climate adaptations, without being able to raise cash through rates.

"But government hasn't really done anything to provide more of general taxation to local government to do these really important things."

But Jones said that missed "realism".

He said he'd visited flood-hit Dunedin where a council decided on a "Highland variant of clearances" after claiming the area was no longer safe to live in.

But he said there had been simple draining solution which avoided unnecessary costs.

"This debate about climate change is a type of medieval fear-mongering."

After more than an hour of debate, the MPs said they had a reached a broad consensus, with minor disagreements.