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Speaker 1: Afternoon. The Infrastructure Commissions just dropped its thirty year plan

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Speaker 1: and it's a sobering reality check. It says we need

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Speaker 1: just cut spending on roads, we need to double spending

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Speaker 1: on hospitals, Energy needs a big spending boost, and Auckland's

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Speaker 1: Harbor Bridge may need a nine dollar toll. Jeff Cooper

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Speaker 1: is the CEO of the Infrastructure Commission with.

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Speaker 2: Us Hi, Jeff Kyoto, Heather, how you doing well?

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Speaker 1: Thank you? Matte explain the thinking behind a nine dollar toll?

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Speaker 2: Oh gosh. Look, we've started really by looking at all

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Speaker 2: of the different infrastructure services New Zealand's going to need

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Speaker 2: over a thirty year period. You know, so often we

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Speaker 2: look at one sector at a time, we come up

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Speaker 2: with lists of things that we realize we can't afford

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Speaker 2: and we have to go back to the drawing board.

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Speaker 2: This is an effort at looking across all of these

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Speaker 2: sectors and putting forward a fundable, coordinated portfolio of investments.

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Speaker 2: And out the back of that clearly is that you know,

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Speaker 2: we need to stage and phase projects a little bit

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Speaker 2: more to make sure that we need get a good

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Speaker 2: balance between services. So if we want to go outside

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Speaker 2: of that budget, what it ultimately means is that we're

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Speaker 2: going to need to derive more revenue from the asset base,

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Speaker 2: and in roading that can look like tolls, it can

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Speaker 2: look like congestion charging and other such things. And all sectors,

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Speaker 2: not just land transport, are grappling with these things because

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Speaker 2: the financials are tight and I think New Zealanders know that.

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Speaker 1: Do you have any preference as to where we build

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Speaker 1: our healthcare?

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Speaker 2: Well, the plan sort of goes through. I mean we

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Speaker 2: start by looking at how our demographics are changing, and

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Speaker 2: under any plausible scenario we look at you know, New

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Speaker 2: Zealand is going to need more investment in health services.

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Speaker 2: We've known this for a while. But if anything, we're

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Speaker 2: aging faster than we thought we were going to. So

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Speaker 2: what we've done in the plan is look at how

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Speaker 2: our aging differs by regent and then establish, you know,

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Speaker 2: where services need to follow those population projections.

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Speaker 1: So it's probably Auckland, yeah.

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Speaker 2: I mean certainly the areas of large population growth, yes,

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Speaker 2: But actually when you look at it is this is

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Speaker 2: something that you know, of all of the services that

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Speaker 2: we look at, this is one for all of New Zealand.

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Speaker 2: Actually broad based aging.

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Speaker 1: Are there parts of the country though, where we are

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Speaker 1: seeing population declines to the extent that we should actually

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Speaker 1: stop investing money and infrastructure.

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Speaker 2: Certainly, when you look at the periphery of many of

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Speaker 2: the network infrastructure we have, it's clear that at the

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Speaker 2: ends of the of the network the financials are most difficult. Now,

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Speaker 2: I don't think for a second that means that we

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Speaker 2: should stop providing services to those areas. But what the

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Speaker 2: plan does say is that the network as a whole

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Speaker 2: needs to be able to fund it. Right, that you

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Speaker 2: can do cross subsidies, that's fine, But certainly when we're

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Speaker 2: looking at, you know, resilience issues, the balance between what

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Speaker 2: is making money on the network and what probably needs

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Speaker 2: money tipped into it is getting harder, and you know,

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Speaker 2: like local governments at the leading edge of that, they

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Speaker 2: see that day to day it's getting harder.

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Speaker 1: Why is it that we spend more money on infrastructure

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Speaker 1: as a proportion of GDP than anywhere in the developed world,

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Speaker 1: but we still have this massive deficit in infrastructure.

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Speaker 2: I think, I mean, it's a very good question on

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Speaker 2: the first one, and in part the answer to this

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Speaker 2: is the fact that we are on a very narrow

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Speaker 2: band of land, the bottom of the South Pacific. We're

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Speaker 2: a country of five and a half million people. We're

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Speaker 2: roughly the same size as great as Sydney, but we

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Speaker 2: are trying to build out infrastructure networks on a parcel

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Speaker 2: of land that is twenty one times larger. Right, So

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Speaker 2: the geology, the geography is very difficult, and we have

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Speaker 2: a dispersed population. That means more pipes, more roads, more

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Speaker 2: transmission lines and so on, and that costs if you're

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Speaker 2: going to do that, you know, so there are some

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Speaker 2: things that are baked in, but of course you know,

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Speaker 2: on the other side of things, clearly we need to

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Speaker 2: try and do this in a way that is more

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Speaker 2: cost efficient than what has been in the past because

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Speaker 2: you know, if we need more hospitals, you know, we

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Speaker 2: can't afford to do them at two to three billion

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Speaker 2: dollars per facility. We can't afford roads that are costing

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Speaker 2: four hundred million dollars per kilometer. So you know, this

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Speaker 2: is why the plan talks to the urgency of getting

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Speaker 2: resource management right and identifying opportunities to bring down those costs. Right.

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Speaker 1: Jeff Listen, thanks for talking to us about I appreciate it.

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Speaker 1: Jeff Cooper, Infrastructure Commission.

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Speaker 2: CEO for more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive.

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