It’s election year, and Chris Bishop is gambling that a few more country roads will help take the National-led Government home.
The increase to the capital allowance, even as the operating expenditure was cut, allows ministers to offer sweeteners that they can call ‘investments’. Let it be known, this is a Government that invests, not a government that funds.
The finance minister has handed her colleague Bishop $7 billion to invest, composed of the increased $5.7b capital allowance and $1.3b in savings on other infrastructure projects.
So, as signalled at Newsroom Pro on the morning of the Budget, there is a little money for hospitals and digital health infrastructure. There is a little money for schools. There is some money for housing. And critically, there’s a 10-figure chunk of money for rail and roads.
We’ll come back to the roads, but first, here’s the summary of the infrastructure on which your taxes – or more accurately, your children and grandchildren’s taxes – will be spent.
Willis quotes an Infrastructure Commission rule-of-thumb that every billion dollars of infrastructure investment supports about 4500 jobs.
She says the redevelopment of Whangārei Hospital continues with a new 158-bed tower block and (as Newsroom Pro had predicted) there’s money to push on with design and enabling works for the redevelopment of the “very shabby” Tauranga, Hawke’s Bay and Palmerston North regional hospitals. Also funds to buy land for a new hospital south of Auckland. All up, $680m on health infrastructure, both physical and digital for cyber security.
Erica Stanford has won funding for the redevelopment of up to 10 schools and the construction of up to 232 new classrooms, as well as the acquisition of land for future school sites in high-growth areas such as Queenstown.
There’s a $69.2m commitment to help deliver between 1800 and 2250 additional social homes over three years – though that building work isn’t scheduled to start until late 2028.
As announced on Tuesday, there’s $100m funding for new courthouses in Rotorua. And there will be upgraded Defence training facilities and modern homes for defence personnel, combined with critical maintenance to extend the life of the navy’s frigates.
The stubbornly effective Rail Minister Winston Peters has extricated up to $1.075b for KiwiRail’s planned network investments in 2027-30, alongside $106.9m to continue critical metropolitan rail infrastructure renewals.
“New Zealanders invested sweat, blood and tears to build their national rail network, but previous governments let it rot,” Peters says. “We are putting New Zealanders’ rail assets to work once again.”
And that brings us to the country roads: the next stage of the Waikato expressway and what Bishop is calling “a suite of transport resilience projects” from Coromandel to Southland, costed at $400m.
For the past six months, Bishop has been grimly warning that the Government can’t afford the soaring $56b required to build the 17 Roads of National Significance that National had promised at the last election.
This week, he gets money for one of them. Just the one. It’s $1.773b for the four-lane Cambridge-to-Piarere leg of the Waikato Expressway.
“We always said that our approach to funding those will need to be sequenced and to be responsible,” Willis says. “The reason that Cambridge-to-Piarere road stands out as ready for investment is, it’s already consented, there’s a really strong business case that shows a very good rate of return for the investment in that road, we’ve already made the property purchases and road designation, so it’s ready to go. Not all of the Roads of National Significance are yet ready to go.”
This stretch of Waikato expressway will be 16km long, so that works out at about $112,000 a metre.
But Bishop prefers another metric: a benefit-to-cost ratio of about 3-to-1. “It is expected to reduce deaths and serious injuries by about 70 percent, improve resilience by reducing the impact of road closures, and improve local access to community facilities and destinations,” he says.
Curiously, there’s no mention of tolling it nor of building it as a public-private partnership – two of Bishop’s preferred mechanisms for delivering roads. Treasury says there’s no information on this, at this stage.
We’ve already learned this week that plans to build the Rotorua and Waitākere courthouses as public-private partnerships have fallen over; instead, the Rotorua courthouses will be a traditional design and build contract. And complications have indefinitely delayed another proposed PPP to build new barracks at Linton Military Camp.
And now, Willis confirms there will likely be a hole in the Budget that was meant to be filled by a hike to the fuel excise tax in January next year. “Multiple ministers, including me, have stated that is unlikely to occur given the heightened fuel prices New Zealanders are experiencing. Cabinet hasn’t yet taken a decision about whether we will defer it and by how long.”
Depending on how long the excise hike is deferred, she tells Newsroom, that could cost the Government between $250m and $1b in lost revenues – revenues that were meant to pay for roads.
ROADS
• Cambridge to Piarere Expressway
Funded $1.773b for the next leg of the Waikato Expressway, extending the four-lane highway another 16km (almost to Tirau) and edging ever closer to providing an attractive southern alternative route between Auckland and the Bay of Plenty.
• SH2 Waioweka Gorge resilience
Likely to include slope stabilisation, rockfall protection, drainage improvements, and targeted works at critical sites through the gorge.
• SH3 Awakino Gorge resilience programme
Expected to include slope stabilisation, improved drainage and culverts, small retaining walls, and works to reduce river erosion alongside the road corridor.
• SH26 Kirikiri Stream bridge replacement
Replacement of the existing bridge with a higher, more resilient structure, alongside raising the highway approaches and upgrading the nearby SH26/SH25A intersection.
• SH25 corridor targeted resilience
Resilience improvements at multiple high-risk sites around the Coromandel, likely including retaining works, drainage upgrades, slope stabilisation and road protection works.
• SH60 Tākaka Hill resilience
Likely to include retaining wall upgrades, landslide monitoring, and improved stormwater and groundwater management at key risk sites.
• SH6 Cromwell to Frankton resilience
Works across multiple sites including rock scaling and bolting, drainage improvements, retaining wall strengthening, localised widening, and reinforced road shoulders.
• SH6 Frankton to Kingston resilience
Proactive slope stabilisation works including rock bolting, mesh protection, soil nailing, and targeted drainage improvements.
• SH6 Haast to Hāwea resilience
Improvements across high-risk sites vulnerable to landslides, rockfall, river erosion, debris flows and road dropouts.
• SH94 Milford to Te Anau resilience
Likely to include rockfall protection, slope stabilisation, rock armouring, and culvert and drainage improvements at key sites along the corridor.
.png?w=600)
