Smoothing the path for infrastructure to serve more of New Zealand’s needs

• New Zealand’s infrastructure is delivered by a mix of central government, local government and commercial entities, each with different funding, governance and regulatory settings.
• Governance and oversight of land transport need particular attention, with no external regulator, despite growing investment, fiscal gaps and reduced reliance on cost-benefit analysis.
• Māori–Crown relationships play an important and evolving role in infrastructure. Strong trust-based partnerships, built on good faith, early engagement and recognition of mātauranga Māori, are essential to achieving better outcomes.
• Infrastructure should be funded according to its type, with user-pays approaches prioritised for network infrastructure, commercial self-funding for economic development assets and tax-based funding reserved for social infrastructure.
• Aligning pricing with best-practice principles helps ensure infrastructure is sustainably funded, efficiently used and delivers broad public benefit.
• Strong governance and oversight ensure infrastructure providers act in users’ long-term interests.
• While local and commercial sectors benefit from economic regulation, central government relies on internal accountability through the Public Finance Act 1989 and the Treasury’s Investment Management System.
• Well-designed, stable regulation is critical to enable infrastructure investment and maintain social licence. But rising compliance costs, frequent regulatory changes and inconsistent capability in resource management are delaying delivery and adding costs.
• A consistent and predictable policy, regulatory and legislative environment is necessary for enabling timely infrastructure investment, particularly in commercial sectors where demand is shaped by government decisions and uncertainty can delay or deter private investment.
• Better collaboration and coordination across infrastructure and land use, enabled by spatial planning, shared standards and aligned funding, can reduce delivery delays, lower costs, and improve long-term integration.
• Financing tools, such as public-private partnerships, special purpose vehicles and asset recycling, help spread the upfront costs of investment and should be matched to project needs to support timely and cost-effective delivery across sectors.
• Policy settings that influence demand, such as emissions targets, pricing frameworks and service standards, must be consistent and predictable to give infrastructure providers the confidence to invest at the right time and scale, particularly in sectors like electricity where stable policy is critical to support decarbonisation and energy security.