Infrastructure politics: Labour not sure about Bishop’s calls for politicians to be less political

Infrastrucutre Minister Chris Bishop. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop has put out a call to infrastructure spokespeople from across Parliament to work together to take some of the politics out of infrastructure - heeding the call of many in the sector who complain about the see-saw approach successive governments have taken to infrastructure by cancelling their predecessors’ pet projects in order to fund their own.

But Labour leader Chris Hipkins was sceptical of that call, saying it was “a little premature” and ironic, given the coalition Government had scrapped many of Labour’s infrastructure projects on coming into Government.

At the annual Building Nations infrastructure conference in Auckland on Wednesday, Bishop noted that each time he’d come to the conference, there was “a conversation about building greater bipartisanship in infrastructure policy and projects”.

“I have to say, I find it frustrating that particular modes of transport have become politicised. National likes roads, the Greens like cycleways, Labour likes light rail, and so it goes. It’s frankly pretty trite and unsophisticated.

“It also belies reality. National started the City Rail Link and Simon Bridges quintupled urban cycleways funding when Transport Minister,” Bishop said.

Bishop noted the recently opened Sydney Metro was celebrated by a group photograph of Liberal and Labor premiers symbolising both parties’ support for the project.

To be fair to New Zealand’s politicians, Auckland’s City Rail Link, an analogous project, has a similar level of cross-party support.

Bishop said he had “written to the infrastructure spokespeople of each political party represented in Parliament inviting them to be formally briefed by the Infrastructure Commission on the development of the 30-Year National Infrastructure Plan” and that he wanted the Commission to brief “party spokespeople, either individually or collectively, roughly every six months” on its plans.

Hipkins said he had not heard from Bishop prior to the speech - although Hipkins is not himself infrastructure spokesman.

“It’s like inviting people to a wedding before you’ve proposed.

“It’s somewhat ironic they are now talking about building a bipartisan consensus when the first thing they did when they came into Government was scrap everything that was already underway.”

“That’s not the way you build consensus. You look for compromise, you look for common ground – that’s not what this Government has been doing,” Hipkins said.

Hipkins said infrastructure had been politicised by the current Government. He pointed to projects being put on hold, and money being cut out of the school maintenance and building funding. Hipkins said Labour had tried to take the politics out of the school building project and he had not known why National had changed that.

“If you want to build consensus, one of the things you do is take the politics out of it. This is a Government that is putting the politics into a lot of these discussions.”

Bishop said the purpose of the briefings was not to bind other parties to the coalition Government’s party political pipeline, but to open up the country’s pipeline as decided by the Infrastructure Commission.

“It’s not our plan. It’s the Commission’s plan,” he said.

“There will always be politics ... ultimately politicians are accountable for billions of dollars of public money. The idea that everything becomes completely bipartisan and completely depoliticised and experts decide what New Zealand builds and when. That is unrealistic and frankly undemocratic,” Bishop said.

He said the speech was about finding a “sweet spot” where “politicians make sound and well-informed judgements based on what experts say should happen in our towns and in our cities”.

The Government has asked the Infrastructure Commission to develop an independent National Infrastructure Plan by the end of 2025. The Commission, created under the previous Government, already has a pipeline; Bishop said it already has 85 contributing organisations and includes more than 6000 projects that, combined, represent $147.6 billion in value.

He said the 30-year plan would see the commission strengthen the pipeline “by aiming to cover all infrastructure providers”.

“They will also use pipeline data to give insights on market capacity and pipeline certainty – including how likely a project is to be delivered and delivered on time and on budget,” he said.

“The plan will outline New Zealand’s infrastructure needs over the next 30 years, planned investments over the next 10 years, and recommendations on priority projects and reforms that can fill the gap between what we will have and what we will need.

“I want the plan is to mirror what happens in Australia, where the Government leverages independent agencies to help them make the right long-term choices, while making sure there is strong capability within Government to deliver these benefits,” Bishop said.

Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.