Advocacy and Engagement Update March 2025
Taking the Pulse – INZ’s 2025 Industry Survey Results
Thank you to everyone who participated in Infrastructure New Zealand’s 2025 Industry Survey, Taking the Pulse. This year, we received 474 responses, an increase from 2024. This has provided us with a valuable snapshot of industry sentiment, challenges and opportunities that we will use to advance our advocacy efforts with government.
The survey results, including both quantitative and qualitative elements as well as a short summary of important results, are now available on our website here. We have also included comparisons with the 2024 survey.
Some key takeaways include:
- Weak short term but stronger medium-term confidence in the business environment.
- Improving workload expectations.
- Staffing challenges persisted through the last year, but outlook is improving.
- Slight easing in expected financial pressures on infrastructure organisations.
- A high level of concern still exists regarding New Zealand’s readiness to respond to increased infrastructure investment.
The survey responses also highlight strong industry calls for a long-term, bipartisan infrastructure pipeline, streamlined procurement processes, and greater workforce investment to address skills shortages.
We encourage you to explore the full survey results and insights here.
Infrastructure Resilience Conference Highlights the Hard Work Ahead
Infrastructure New Zealand and Brightstar’s recent Infrastructure Resilience Conference was an opportunity for an extremely well-informed and engaged crowd of delegates to hear from those at the forefront of driving change when it comes to improving New Zealand’s resilience and risk preparedness.
Minister for Infrastructure Chris Bishop laid out the Government’s desire to tackle the public sector’s poor performance in asset management. To do this better, we need to invest in gathering, holding and making available better data and information. Minister Bishop was also critical of our country’s current ad hoc approach to crises and the costly way we respond to these events through bespoke funds and recovery measures. We need to be more proactive. The National Risk and Resilience Framework is being designed to bring more ‘cogency and direction’ to this work.
Simon Watts, Minister for Climate Change, presented the overarching objectives and goals behind the development of the National Adaptation Framework, the clarity on risks, responsibilities, why we need to know what and what not to invest in and, most contentious of all, who pays. We look forward to the introduction of legislation later this year.
To finish off the political part of the event, we had an interesting panel discussion featuring Simon Court (Under-Secretary for Infrastructure), Chlöe Swarbrick, Kieran McAnulty and Stuart Smith around the Climate Adaptation Inquiry and some of the key challenges facing communities, local and central Government as they deal with the impacts of climate change. While there is reasonable consensus around the need for better access to data, notable differences exist in many other areas.
Important technical insights were shared by speakers such as Reid Basher (Former Senior Advisor to the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction), Jo Hendy, Chief Executive of the Climate Change Commission and Jonathan Boston, a member of the Expert Working Group on Managed Retreat. Emphasis was placed on New Zealand’s risk preparedness, exposure, and vulnerabilities to the interdependency of our infrastructure system, as well as on how resilience must be built into renewals and replacements.
The role of mana whenua and Iwi was emphasised by Dr Alayna Rā and Dr Rowan Dixon from WSP as critical to the long-term view we need to take on infrastructure resilience. The importance of wider sector collaboration was a common theme, as was the need to connect across transport, telecommunications, electricity, central and local government, Iwi, and communities. We finished up with some pretty frank discussions on who should pay for the inevitably costly decisions we need to make, and New Zealand’s future insurance outlook.
Thank you to Tonkin+Taylor’s Angela Young for her excellent work as MC and our event and session sponsors WSP, Tonkin + Taylor, Hynds Pipe Systems, BECA, Assured Guaranty, ICBC and Stantec. Thank you also to all those who attended and participated.
Labour Party Reshuffle
Hot on the heels of the Government’s recent Cabinet reshuffle, Labour also changed up some of their portfolios:
- Kieran McAnulty has picked up the new Infrastructure and Public Investment portfolio.
- Tangi Utikere picks up Local Government to go with his existing Transport portfolio.
- Barbara Edmonds loses the infrastructure portfolio but still retains the Finance and Economy portfolio and adds the new Savings and Investment portfolio.
Legislation and Other Submissions
INZ made several submissions over the last month or so on new legislation and other government public consultations. You can read them all here on our website.
During March, INZ also presented several submissions to the relevant Select Committees and had good engagement with committee members interested in our feedback. Our submission on the Offshore Renewable Energy Bill gained some attention in The House ahead of our presentation to the Transport and Infrastructure Select Committee. An amusing exchange followed an oral parliamentary Question to the Minister of Energy (Hon. Simon Watts), which referenced a point made in our submission regarding the delays in the legislation. Here’s the Hansard link.
INZ is currently working on a submission on the Land Transport (Time of Use Charging) Management Amendment Bill, which we have publicly supported. It is important to make sure the legislative provisions are workable, and the framework for our first Scheme in New Zealand is robust (Please get in touch if you would like to provide input –michelle.mccormick@infrastructure.org.nz).
INZ also welcomed the recent announcements that the Government is looking to make a number of amendments to the Public Works Act, following recommendations from the Expert Advisory Panel. The Public Works Act is an essential tool for acquiring land for public infrastructure projects, yet the current legislation leads to grossly inefficient and costly processes. There is significant duplication between the Public Works Act and the Resource Management Act, which leads to project delays and greatly increases the cost of developing critical public infrastructure. Streamlining these processes and providing the mechanism for government agencies to work together to acquire land and enable the relocation of existing infrastructure should help overcome some of the current impediments.
It is also good to see proposals offering incentive payments to encourage landowners to reach an early sale agreement and recognition payments for all landowners whose properties are acquired under the accelerated process. A more direct decision-making process involving the Minister of Land Information or the relevant council, rather than the Environment Court, is also supported.
The draft legislation is expected to be introduced in May and followed by a full Select Committee process.
Spanner in the Works Over the Wildlife Act
A High Court decision on the judicial review of the legality of approvals under s53 of the Wildlife Act has thrown up an untimely spanner in the works as the Government looks to ramp up infrastructure delivery. The High Court has found that any section 53 Wildlife Authority is ultra vires to the extent that it purports to authorise the killing of protected wildlife. This could have wide ramifications on the infrastructure sector, from the operation of airports and current bird-strike prevention practices to other infrastructure developments like the Mt Messenger bypass. DOC’s Deputy Director-General Policy has issued a statement saying that DOC is reviewing the decision and considering what it means for how it manages its Wildlife Act permissions responsibilities. In the meantime, existing authorisation holders should continue to undertake their activities consistent with the conditions of their authorisation and take all reasonable steps to ensure that wildlife is not harmed.
INZ Policy Development
Following on from last year’s INZ Senior Leaders’ Retreat in Waitākere, INZ is considering the next steps in progressing our work on a vision for Aotearoa New Zealand’s and how infrastructure can contribute to this. Sir Bob Harvey will be helping to guide our Vision Blueprint event, which will be held in late March. Expect to hear more about this next month.
INZ is also embarking on an exciting work programme to explore Connecting Canterbury and the challenges and opportunities that exist for infrastructure. We have a few other research reports commencing, which we look forward to sharing in the coming months. INZ’s International delegation to Canada is fast approaching in May, and the team has been working hard to finalise presenters and site visits to cover the focus areas of the evolution of the P3 model, public transport innovation, Indigenous infrastructure planning and development, and the wider system of infrastructure planning and funding in Canada.
Media
Media interest in infrastructure and the wider planning and funding environment remains high. Over the past month, INZ has issued various media releases, opinion pieces and interviews on the following topics: the four-year Parliament term and what it means for infrastructure development, supporting the proposed changes to the Public Works Act, supporting the first reading and referral to select committee of the Time-of-Use Charging legislation, and supporting the announcement of further preparation work being undertaken on the second Auckland Harbour crossing.
You can read our media releases here.
The media has also sought commentary, and INZ has participated in a number of interviews on the modernisation of the Public Works Act and Auckland Transport’s Cost of Congestion white paper.
Welcoming New Members
Nau mai haere mai, welcome, to our new Infrastructure New Zealand members. We’re so glad to have you on board and look forward to continuing to engage with you.
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