Significant damage has been inflicted on State Highway 5 between Napier and Taupō after Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Mike Scott
Significant damage has been inflicted on State Highway 5 between Napier and Taupō after Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo / Mike Scott
The widespread damage from Cyclone Gabrielle really hits home for businesses in the Bay of Plenty, particularly as the Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne regions are so similar to us.
Our surrounding mountain ranges can act as giant funnels, concentrating masses of rainfall into our waterways and swampy lowlands.
This hasa devastating impact on the primary sector – our exporters who bring foreign earnings into our local economies.
The impact on Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne’s primary sector is yet to be fully understood. But saying the flooding has been a major disruption is an understatement.
Infrastructure sometimes gets a bad rap. But we’ve seen how not having it separates communities and suppresses economic prosperity.
It took days, in many cases longer, for households and businesses to reconnect to power and telecommunications. It is representative of the scale and spread of Cyclone Gabrielle’s impact on critical infrastructure.
It makes sense there will be some temporary fixes to reconnect people as soon as possible, but there will likely be a number of big new projects required for longer-term solutions.
However, there is a major snag. The Infrastructure Strategy 2022 (by the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission) suggested our current planning system slows down essential infrastructure projects.
On top of that, many New Zealand projects are being further delayed by policy decisions and funding constraints.
The Commission believes there is potential to cut the infrastructure decision-making planning process from its current average of 15 years to eight years.
Tauranga Business Chamber chief executive Matt Cowley. Photo / Mead Norton
It refers to the Waikato Expressway as a case study, which took 40 years from conception to completion. Its research suggests the decision-making process could have been 20 years shorter, and indicated the New Zealand economy would have secured $2.3 billion in benefits from speeding up the decision-making process.
I support the Commission’s findings, which recommend more flexibility in the decision-making process, taking into account the cost of delays.
While the Government has started to reform the Resource Management Act, there is still a complex web of legislative requirements where projects can get tangled up, exhausted and eventually not go anywhere.
It’s a battle for big civic projects to get through the Treasury business-case framework and budgets. There are also the complex planning requirements, before you’ve even reached the consenting components – with all roads leading to a likely Environment Court hearing.
This is an opportune time for Government to streamline its processes to allow projects of significance to proceed in a safe and just way.
To be clear, I’m not just talking about streamlining projects when recovering from natural disasters. I’m talking about projects that can support the social resilience of communities and their economic prosperity.
There are a number of big conversations to have as we recover from Cyclone Gabrielle and prepare for more potential extreme weather conditions in our changing climate. Addressing our planning and decision-making process needs to be part of the conversation.
Otherwise, it feels like we are scoring an own goal if we continue to be hamstrung with overly complex and convoluted legislative hoops to jump through... when we really need shovels in the ground.
