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Speaker 1: Back home now and we're talking infrastructure. A new Infrastructure

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Speaker 1: Agency and a National Infrastructure Plan will be established on

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Speaker 1: the first of December. The agency will serve as the

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Speaker 1: shop front for PPPs, public private partnerships and any other

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Speaker 1: private investment in infrastructure. Nic leg gets the Infrastructure New

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Speaker 1: Zealand Chief Executive. He's with me this morning. Hey, Nick, Hi, right,

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Speaker 1: good to have you with us this morning. So I

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Speaker 1: want to know the most important thing here surely is

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Speaker 1: well two things. One is whether the politicians can agree.

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Speaker 1: But who's going to run this this new agency and

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Speaker 1: what will their priority be? Is it climate and emissions

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Speaker 1: or is it economic development?

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Speaker 2: Well, the agency won't be stood up until the first

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Speaker 2: of December, and it's going to be rolled from an

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Speaker 2: existing agency called Crown Infrastructure partners which has done a

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Speaker 2: lot of really good work around the country, sourcing finance

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Speaker 2: for communities, administering government infrastructure funds and actually getting stuff built.

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Speaker 2: It does have a good history. But the new National

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Speaker 2: Infrastructure Agency, which you know will be the name of

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Speaker 2: the new organization, will do that additional work and that

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Speaker 2: is be the shop front for private public private partnerships,

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Speaker 2: which will be back on the agenda and that's important,

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Speaker 2: not because every project that New Zealand builds will be

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Speaker 2: a public private partnership, but rather because we just need

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Speaker 2: that as an additional tool in our toolbox. We can

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Speaker 2: get benefits from those. I think that we probably we've

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Speaker 2: got some maturity, We've got to mature the model a

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Speaker 2: little bit improve them. But the truth is that we've

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Speaker 2: got some challenges with infrastructure in this country. I think

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Speaker 2: most krews know that we rank bottom or near the

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Speaker 2: bottom on the OECD for the value that we get

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Speaker 2: when we spend a dollar, and which means I think

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Speaker 2: we're fourth from the bottom. So we just we just

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Speaker 2: don't extract the value because our system takes too long things,

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Speaker 2: you know, we stop, start the pipeline and politicians come

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Speaker 2: in and change stuff and it's important.

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Speaker 1: So that's the funding. But in terms of the prioritizing

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Speaker 1: what we need to fund, you know, won't it be

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Speaker 1: critical how they set this agency up and what its

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Speaker 1: task is is it is it reducing climate carbon emissions

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Speaker 1: or is it economic development? You know what's the overriding.

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Speaker 2: Well that that direction will come. I mean the government

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Speaker 2: obviously you have to give that direction. The government are

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Speaker 2: very focused on on productivity and economic development. Carbon emissions

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Speaker 2: will be part of that, the Minister made Reducing carbon

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Speaker 2: will be part of the Minister made that clear. But

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Speaker 2: the overall direction will come from the thirty year Infrastructure Plan.

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Speaker 2: And this is the problem. I mean, it's you know,

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Speaker 2: heaving five minutes with you talking about it is really important,

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Speaker 2: but there's there's a lot going on here. And what

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Speaker 2: we're saying about this the system that builds our infrastructure

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Speaker 2: is the thing to get right and it's the thing

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Speaker 2: that we shouldn't have the tooling and throwing over between

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Speaker 2: you know, a change of government. What we need to

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Speaker 2: do is you know, the priorities might change between one

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Speaker 2: government to the next, but the system needs to be

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Speaker 2: sound and pretty secure because when you change stuff, and

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Speaker 2: we know that through health and we know through vocational education,

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Speaker 2: when you when you change things, you actually stop progress.

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Speaker 2: And the government were really clear here they said, oh,

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Speaker 2: we could have pushed a few more things together, but

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Speaker 2: we actually wanted to keep momentum so we can deliver

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Speaker 2: infrastructure in our first term. And I think that's really

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Speaker 2: important because this stuff shouldn't be party political right that

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Speaker 2: these agencies should be able to go go ahead and

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Speaker 2: do their work and get stuff built for New Zealand.

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Speaker 1: And clearly, clearly we haven't actually been doing that very well.

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Speaker 1: As you've outlined. Neck Leget Infrastructure New Zealand Chief Executive.

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