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Speaker 1: Got some big picture stuff from the government yesterday. Of

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Speaker 1: course we are to have a National Infrastructure Agency. It'll

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Speaker 1: bring together partners and crownd the whole idea of some

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Speaker 1: sort of framework, thirty year plan all that. Northern Infrastructure

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Speaker 1: Forum Executive Director Barney Irvine with us on this, Barney morning,

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Speaker 1: Good morning, sounds good, is it real?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, look it's still very much at the conceptual stage.

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Speaker 2: A lot of this and there's a lot of order

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Speaker 2: to flow under the bridge and a lot of detail

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Speaker 2: to be filled in there. But look, the key thing

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Speaker 2: for us is that it takes things in the right

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Speaker 2: direction in terms of, you know, taking us towards more

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Speaker 2: robust decision making based on outcomes rather than politics, towards

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Speaker 2: providing the market with the clarity and the consistency it

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Speaker 2: needs to see, and towards just driving better, faster, cheaper

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Speaker 2: infrastructure delivery right across the board. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: See, once again that all sounds good. But the difficulty

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Speaker 1: I had in Hipkins displayed it yesterday is we have

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Speaker 1: a group of people who are diametrically opposed to each

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Speaker 1: other ideologically speaking on things like infrastructure in this country.

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Speaker 1: Unless you can close that gap, you're going nowhere fast.

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Speaker 1: Isn't that reasonable?

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Speaker 2: Oh? Look absolutely, and you know therein realize the rub

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Speaker 2: I guess a couple of things, you know, give us

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Speaker 2: a bit of confidence with it. And one of those

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Speaker 2: is that this sort of approach has been been used

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Speaker 2: off offshore and overseas to do good effect in places

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Speaker 2: like Australia and the UK, and to an extent Denmark

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Speaker 2: as well. So you know what, why can't we at least,

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Speaker 2: you know, why can't we adopt that that sort of

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Speaker 2: approach ourselves and at least move things somewhat further forward.

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Speaker 2: The other comment I'd make is that you know, while

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Speaker 2: we have seen these these these big political divisions over infrastructure,

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Speaker 2: I don't think that's reflective of the public mood, right.

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Speaker 2: I think there's a lot more consensus among the public

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Speaker 2: about infrastructure, and the vast majority of people just want

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Speaker 2: to see the governor of the day get on and

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Speaker 2: do starts and and so if the if the politicians

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Speaker 2: tune in to that public mood, I think that that

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Speaker 2: that that that stands up in pretty good stead to

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Speaker 2: move ahead or to move in this direction.

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Speaker 1: In this direction, I like your optimism, Barney Gowell. With that,

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Speaker 1: Barney over on Who's the Northern Infrastructure Forum Executive Director.

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Speaker 1: For more from the mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to

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