Barry Soper: Construction workforce not big enough

Joyce was right about one thing, they need it to support growth. Photo / Nick Reed

All Governments do it, dress up jaw dropping announcements as though the light bulb has suddenly been switched on.

Steven Joyce stood in front of a sympathetic business audience as they were about to sup wine and tuck into lunch in Wellington to deliver his pre-Budget speech.

He was there to whet their appetite and he gave them just over twenty minutes to salivate over just how great the Government was.

He trotted out what were impressive figures proving how well we're doing economically compared to almost everyone else in the world.

We're even better than the Australians which is why so many kiwis are now coming back to the country.

He failed to mention that there are still more of them leaving than returning home but why spoil a good yarn?

Then he got to his announcement, that the Government had decided to invest eleven billion dollars into new capital infrastructure over the next four years, including four billion in the Budget he'll be delivering in just on a month's time.

Impressive figures from a Government finally doing something about our congested roads, exploding school rolls and overcrowded hospitals.

But hang on the announcement wasn't quite what it seemed.

They'd already said last December they were going to spend nine billion bucks over the same time, so in reality the announcement essentially was about what they'd already told us they were going to do with an additional billion being tagged on as election lolly this year with another couple of dollops a few years out if they're reelected.

Perhaps we should be generous though, the December announcement was made in the same week that John Key dramatically announced he was calling it quits and of course Joyce wasn't in the finance role, Bill English was.

The fact is they're spending more in infrastructure because they've got no choice.

Joyce was right about one thing, they need it to support growth, he meant economic, but in reality it's about the population bubble and all that comes with that.

He made an observation that in some parts of God's Own, including Auckland, you can't move for road cones at times, which he said was frustrating but was a sign of how they're building for growth.

It's a pity there's not more work being done behind those cones which probably tells us something else.

We've got the biggest construction workforce the country's ever had but clearly it's not big enough.

Spending more money on infrastructure means you've got to increase the number of workers and where will we get them from?

Overseas of course, and you know the problems that creates.