Work on the technical feasibility of a new port on the Manukau Harbour signals the government won’t pander to the provinces ahead of council elections
Analysis: Few things signal the imminence of elections better than where a government chooses to drop its big-ticket infrastructure projects.
Tomorrow morning, the Northern Advocate will trumpet Budget funding for a new hospital, but bemoan an end to hopes that the country’s main import port would shift to Whangārei. The Christchurch Press and the Nelson Mail, too, can celebrate new hospitals.
The small community of the Chatham Islands doesn’t have its own newspaper, but word will spread fast this afternoon of $35.1 million for a new ship to replace the ageing Southern Tiare, nearing the end of its life.
Inevitably the question will arise, though, of the extent to which some regions have done better than others. And that is politically potent, as the Government fights perceptions that its ministers have a big city disdain for rural and provincial New Zealand.
Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the announcement of a technical engineering feasibility study of the Manukau Harbour as a location for a future port.
In a Budget that lifts capital infrastructure spending to $61.9 billion, from 2022 to 2026, the $3.7m operational expenditure to study a Manukau port and a Northland dry-dock is very, very small change.
But Northland had pinned its hopes on new roads and rail – and the Ports of Auckland shifting to Whangārei. That was one of NZ First’s biggest campaign platforms in 2017; Labour humoured Winston Peters and Shane Jones for three years by paying for a study – but no longer.
A Manukau port would be more accessible to ships steaming south across the Tasman, and it would support hopes of a reinvigorated domestic coastal shipping network. Yet the Manukau is also a shallow harbour, prone to silting, with a treacherous bar that has claimed many lives over the years.
Something has to change, though. Even Auckland leaders quietly acknowledge the roads of the central city can’t continue to be clogged by 18-wheeler trucks moving containers from the downtown port on the Waitematā Harbour. Mayor Phil Goff has talked up a new port at Manukau – and today he gets his way.
While the Government says it hasn't taken Whangārei and Coromandel ports off the table, today's announcement will discourage Goff's Northland neighbours.
The dry dock proposal and a new $1.84m firefighting base at Whangārei Airport are mere sops to Whangārei; they’re not the international port of which civic and business leaders had dreamed.
This is just one example (and let’s not discount that new hospital!) but it’s reflected in other infrastructure spending, and even in operational spending. For instance, the Government is increasing caps on its underpowered first home grants in the five biggest cities and in Queenstown.
The past year has seen emerging resentment of the Government in the country's smaller districts and their councils; Three Waters, the so-called ute tax and criticism of agriculture climate emissions have all contributed to the discontent.
This Budget does little to win back the hearts and minds of regional New Zealand.
