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Speaker 1: We've got a new report out this morning that I

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Speaker 1: suspect actually tells us what we already know. A major

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Speaker 1: infrastructure has a lack of upkeep problem. Central government has

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Speaker 1: poor asset management plans and a tendency to chase the

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Speaker 1: cheapest price.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 1: Kelly Messier is the lead author of this particular report

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Speaker 1: and is with us this morning. Kelly, good morning to you.

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Speaker 2: Good morning.

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Speaker 1: Now, do we have international comparisons or not? Can we

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Speaker 1: look to countries and go that's how you do it?

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Speaker 2: It's quite difficult to do that in some ways because

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Speaker 2: the way we're doing it is a little bit of peake.

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Speaker 2: In some ways, it's a little bit confusing. But actually,

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Speaker 2: when I spoke to international people, often they thought New

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Speaker 2: Zealand wasn't doing too badly, which I was quite surprised

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Speaker 2: at because there's a lot of gaps in our best practice.

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Speaker 2: So that was interesting. But there are certainly some things

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Speaker 2: we can be doing better that other countries are doing.

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Speaker 2: And one of the things that I noticed was other

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Speaker 2: countries have scorecards which can help you track how infrastructure

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Speaker 2: is being managed and what condition it's and compare it

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Speaker 2: to different places. So that's one of the recommendations in

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Speaker 2: our report because it's very hard to get a good

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Speaker 2: sense of who's managing infrastructure well and who isn't.

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Speaker 1: In New Zealand, only one of six central government agencies

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Speaker 1: keeps a full asset register and just too have comprehensive

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Speaker 1: asset management plans in place. Who are they and why

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Speaker 1: do the others not do it?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we looked at I mean, there's lots of asset

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Speaker 2: infrastructure owning agencies and we just looked at the six

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Speaker 2: who have the most infrastructure, and the one that was

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Speaker 2: maintaining an asset register is coying a Order. Only two

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Speaker 2: of the six maintaining asset management plans as well, which

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Speaker 2: is like Cartahi and kyng Order. Why they don't do

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Speaker 2: it well is, I guess for some of them it's

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Speaker 2: not their core business, so health and education for example,

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Speaker 2: their job is to do health and education and they

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Speaker 2: might not necessarily have asset management specialists sitting at their

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Speaker 2: executive tables. And so another recommendation of ours is that

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Speaker 2: that needs to be happening because they are managing huge

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Speaker 2: amounts of assets on the behalf of the country, so

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Speaker 2: they need to be following best practice.

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Speaker 1: So you're telling me that I'm providing an education system.

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Speaker 1: The fact that the building I own, the assets I

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Speaker 1: own are all leaky and the kids don't learn because

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Speaker 1: they're wet and cold and damp. That's not how some

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Speaker 1: somehow dubtailed into the overall operation and picture.

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Speaker 2: This is my best guess on why they're not doing

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Speaker 2: those things. I mean, they should be doing those things,

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Speaker 2: and I think we need to be making sure that

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Speaker 2: they are. And one of our recommendations is that we

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Speaker 2: should get a watchdog agency that can just be a

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Speaker 2: central repository for all the information and for making sure

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Speaker 2: that all the agencies are doing what they have to

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Speaker 2: be doing. The moment's a bit of a hodgepodge at

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Speaker 2: the moment.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, nice to talk to you, Kelly.

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Speaker 1: Kelly Mercier, Deputy director of the Helling Clark Foundation, on

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Speaker 1: that particular report.

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