Thirty Year Infrastructure Plan Released

The Thirty Year New Zealand Infrastructure Plan 2015 sets out New Zealand’s response to the infrastructure challenges we will face over the next three decades, Finance Minister Bill English says.

“Infrastructure supports people’s daily lives, even if they don’t think about it all that often – unless something goes wrong,” Mr English says.

“We have a good national infrastructure base, bolstered by investment in recent years. But over the next 30 years we face some big challenges:

• Some ageing infrastructure networks will need renewing. Our schools are 42 years old on average, and parts of the water network are over 100 years old.
• Demand for infrastructure will change. The population is ageing – from an average age of 37 today to 43 years in 2043. Some of our regions will grow as the population increases by 1.2 million by 2045, but a few are expected to shrink.
• Infrastructure is expensive – central and local government combined are expected to spend $11 billion on infrastructure each year for the next 10 years.”

“The 2015 Plan, which was developed collaboratively with local government and industry, sets out 145 initiatives that will strengthen asset management, improve our understanding of demand, and improve decision making around infrastructure provision.”

Key initiatives include:

• Developing national data standards for roads, water and buildings to allow a consistent assessment of infrastructure across the country.
• Establishing centres of excellence to use this data to improve infrastructure decision making.
• Investigating how best to undertake long-term integrated regional planning.
• An increased focus on non-asset solutions such as demand management to make better use of existing networks.
• Further development of a trans-Tasman infrastructure market.

“These actions will drive better use of existing infrastructure and better allocation of new investment,” Mr English says.

A pipeline of government department capital intentions for the next five years has also been published today.

“The pipeline shows the Government is committed to ongoing investment in infrastructure and other public services.

“This includes, for example, a $13.9 billion land transport programme between 2015 and 2018, as well as continuation of the more than $2 billion roll-out of Ultra-Fast Broadband and the Rural Broadband Initiative.”

“Both the Infrastructure Plan and Capital Intentions Pipeline demonstrate the Government’s commitment to transparency and engagement on these issues,” Mr English says. “Strengthening the integration between sectors and across central and local government is pivotal to achieving the best results from infrastructure.”

Background information

The Thirty Year New Zealand Infrastructure Plan 2015 is available at: www.infrastructure.govt.nz.

Mr English’s speech launching the Plan is available at www.beehive.govt.nz.