The Board has discussed many of these issues over the past year, and will continue to push for progress. Some of the issues and areas of progress we have seen over the past year include:
There have been some improvements to planning legislation but nothing driven from a ground up and fresh start perspective. The misalignment and duplication of planning legislation hinders development and adds significant cost. We hope that the recently announced resource management reforms that will require councils to work together on a single plan and introduce a national planning template will help improve this.
Demand management is often discarded as inappropriate as it is thought of narrowly in terms of pricing and user pays. This is overly simplistic and misses out a lot of the potential demand management ofers. As it is crucial that we both increase and decrease demand on our infrastructure, to ensure we are getting the best possible value from it, we have just published a discussion document to highlight the excellent examples of demand management already delivering in New Zealand. It is time to be bold and have an objective debate about the relative merits of demand management. This discussion document is the start of this process. We challenge industry to consider utilising these tools more to drive value from our assets.
We have continued to follow with interest the development of the Capital Intentions Plan, which will be published later this year. From a private sector perspective, this view of infrastructure intentions is critical to forward planning. The progress of the Public Private Partnerships (PPP) is a real achievement, as is the progression of the first transport PPP (Transmission Gully) and the expanding use of the Better Business Case methodology.
More concerning is the market feedback from the rebuild of the vertical infrastructure in Christchurch. We are on track for sub-optimal outcomes unless coordination can be improved and a well sequenced pipeline of prioritised projects is developed and available. In contrast, the horizontal infrastructure rebuild is a real highlight, notwithstanding questions over the standard it is being built to and who should pay for this.
Sustainability and resilience continue to feature in conversations and come through in investment decisions. There is a need to avoid over-investment and over-engineering but also ensure the required levels of service can be delivered following disruption, as well as having the fexibility to meet changes in demand. A national picture of resilience is currently being compiled.
As we reported last year, we see a strategic disconnect within the Auckland Plan. Disappointingly, the pre-draft Auckland Unitary Plan and the Integrated Transport Plan show this disconnect still exists. We expect to see an Auckland Transport Plan where the investment is timely, affordable, delivers real benefits and is well integrated with housing and land use.
It is great to see the progress being made on productive water and the freshwater policy programme, with a note of caution that there is a lot of work still to be done. In the meantime, irrigation continues to expand, posing a number of challenges, while becoming more efficient.
Finally, it is really encouraging to see the developments underway in the Local Government sector, especially the plans for the Centre of Excellence, the range of new initiatives to deliver a stronger evidence base for Urban Water, and the innovation and improved investment analysis that are coming out of discussions and management of roading and maintenance.
About the National Infrastructure Advisory Board The National Infrastructure Advisory Board consists of members from the private sector and outside central government. It was established to advise the National Infrastructure Unit and the Minister for Infrastructure and to act as a conduit between infrastructure stakeholders and the government. The Board provides advice on infrastructure project appraisal, capital asset management issues and the development of the National Infrastructure Plan and interim publications. In the past year the Board has twice accompanied the NIU around New Zealand's regions with workshops on Performance indicators and Trend and scenario modelling, and has continued to connect the NIU with local interest groups. |