Infrastructure issues that are less in need of debate.

• Infrastructure enables vital services that support our wellbeing, drive a productive and sustainable economy, and help achieve broader social and environmental goals. But these benefits come with significant and lasting costs. Investment decisions are often irreversible, span generations, and need to be future-focused.
• A range of public and private organisations are involved in providing New Zealand’s infrastructure.
• A significant distinction between public and private infrastructure ownership is that the public sector tends to balance multiple outcomes (such as health, education, and mobility), whereas private and corporate owners focus on achieving commercial returns through maintaining asset value and performance.
• Maintenance and renewal are New Zealand’s greatest investment challenges, accounting for most of forecast spend. 
• These challenges are amplified by natural hazards, like earthquakes and extreme weather, which damage infrastructure, and other risks, like cybersecurity, that make infrastructure harder to operate.
• New capital investment will also be necessary. New Zealand will need to keep building and improving infrastructure in response to changing needs.
• New Zealanders pay for infrastructure in three main ways: user charges, local government rates and central government taxation.
• Despite high levels of spending among the highest per capita in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) New Zealand often struggles to get value for money from its infrastructure investment. Underlying drivers of poor value include fragmented planning, regulatory inefficiencies, complex approval processes and suboptimal use of existing assets.
• We’ve identified key factors that are critical to sustaining agreement on infrastructure investment: affordability, balance, deliverability, and transparency and accountability. 
  The draft Plan presents our initial advice on New Zealand’s future infrastructure needs and how to meet them.
• We’re seeking feedback on the draft Plan, which will be used to help inform the final Plan that will be delivered to the Government in late 2025.