Intergenerational Infrastructure: borrowing $60bn and taking the politics out

Te Waihanga published New Zealand’s first 30-year National Infrastructure Plan in February 2026 and the Government accepted all 16 recommendations, with Labour and Green support. TOP’s argument is that acceptance is not implementation. The Plan and its Pipeline would be given a legislative basis agreed across party lines, with reviews limited to a three-yearly cycle timed to fall in the middle of a parliamentary term rather than at the start of a new government.

Major projects a new government wants to cancel would need an enabling Bill and a full select committee process — the same route by which the commitment was made. The document is careful that this is not a veto: the point is a visible parliamentary process and a public record instead of a Budget footnote. Alongside it, a public progress scorecard published at 100 days, 12 months and three years against the pipeline.

All major government-funded investment proposals would face an independent readiness review by Te Waihanga before approval. The Government has already accepted this; TOP’s addition is enforcement — Treasury capital allocations would be conditional on passing it. Projects that fail the review, CBAx cost-benefit analysis or the maintenance threshold do not proceed.

The Plan proposes 60 percent of future infrastructure spending go to maintenance, and TOP would mandate and fund it, with Te Waihanga setting the standards that central and local entities are measured against. The document’s evidence for the problem is blunt: in 2025, 12 of 31 central government agencies — including Police and Defence — had no asset register at all. Every asset-owning public entity would have to name an executive legally and professionally accountable for asset stewardship.

Where poor planning or deferred maintenance is found, Te Waihanga could ask the Audit Office to open a formal review, publicly reprimand the chief executive and the mayor or chair, and in extreme cases send experts in directly. The document compares this to the Auditor-General — an independent officer who can make adverse findings about elected bodies without replacing them — and reserves direct intervention for extreme cases.

The OECD ranks New Zealand last of 33 countries for professionalisation and accountability in asset management. Public entities managing assets above a threshold would have to staff their leadership with certified asset management practitioners. Separately, every infrastructure body would have to formally consider demand management — load-spreading, time-of-use charging, better use of what exists — before committing to new capital.

Gross public debt is around 51 percent of GDP against an OECD average near 112 percent, with an AA to AAA credit rating. On that basis the document argues an extra 15 percent of GDP in special infrastructure debt is safe, costing $2.5 to $3.5 billion a year in interest and lifting infrastructure spending from 5–6 percent of GDP to 6–7 percent. Its counter-argument is that deferring maintenance is also borrowing — just invisibly, from future generations, as degraded assets.

The largest of the six funds at $32 billion. It would absorb and extend the Local Government Funding Agency, whose lending book is approaching $30 billion, and NIFFCo. It could issue special purpose bonds against user-pays revenue for water, energy and tolled roads, borrow generally where costs cannot be recovered, and keep lending to councils and council-controlled organisations.

The document’s position is that central government has captured the tax windfall from regional growth while passing councils unfunded mandates, leaving them dependent on rates. It calls centrally imposed rate caps a blunt instrument that misses the real problem. Alongside the new revenue tools: benchmarking and value-for-money audits, regional pooling of back-office functions and procurement, and technical support for smaller and rural councils on complex financing.

The objection is specifically to the financing model, not private delivery. The document cites a 2023 Treasury review finding higher financing costs than direct Crown borrowing in most New Zealand PPPs, with risk transfer proving illusory in several contracts, and argues PPPs end up on the Crown balance sheet either formally or in practice. Design-and-build contracts, operations and maintenance concessions and service contracts are all supported.

The document names construction cost inflation as “the most legitimate technical risk in the policy”. Its answer is that Christchurch was a sudden unplanned demand spike in one region, where this is a paced, nationally coordinated build-up with Te Waihanga levelling workloads in dialogue with industry — and that the 60 percent maintenance share means much of the money goes to repair and renewal, which is less inflation-prone than greenfield building.

The link to TOP’s tax policy is explicit: as compulsory KiwiSaver 2.0 balances grow they will need securities to invest in, and infrastructure bonds owned by New Zealanders keep the cashflows domestic, reduce reliance on offshore debt markets and give citizens a direct stake in the assets.