Our German Desk
Purpose
The Plan is a strategic initiative led by the Commission to guide infrastructure decision-making across central and local government, and to provide clarity and confidence to the infrastructure industry for long-term investment and planning.
New Zealand faces infrastructure challenges, with historic underinvestment and inefficient reinvestment strategies contributing to underdeveloped key public services. The Commission highlights that infrastructure-decision-making needs to be directed to respond to “… a growing and aging population, ongoing economic growth and international trade, technology changes, and the need to provide affordable and reliable electricity to decarbonise the economy.”
The Plan has received bipartisan support. Minister for Infrastructure, Chris Bishop, has stated that the Plan “… is not the … coalition government’s plan, this is New Zealand’s plan.” Labour party leader Chris Hipkins has welcomed the Plan, noting that “if we can agree on some shared priorities, we can avoid this flip-flopping cycle where everything takes too long and costs too much.”
Overview
The Plan sets out 19 recommendations across four key areas:
- Establishing affordable and sustainable funding: The Plan proposes matching funding tools to infrastructure categories including user-pays for network assets, commercial funding for economic assets, and tax funding for social infrastructure while applying user-pricing across networks to guide efficient use and investment. It proposes that transport funding should be fully covered by user charges, and government investment should be based on long-term infrastructure needs and asset planning. Stable, multi-year funding should be available to well-performing agencies, and investment decisions should be guided by regularly updated infrastructure pipelines and priority analyses.
- Clearing way for infrastructure: The Plan calls for reducing regulatory complexity, improving coordination, and strengthening workforce capacity. It recommends clear consumer protections across all sectors, aligning spatial and infrastructure planning, and enabling broader use of infrastructure through supportive land-use policies. A strengthened resource management system should balance national benefits with environmental impacts, while stable policies, especially in energy, are needed to support investment and decarbonisation. Workforce development and public sector capability must be informed by long-term infrastructure needs, with improved career pathways and leadership standards to ensure effective project delivery.
- Starting with maintenance: The Plan emphasises prioritising maintenance over new builds. It recommends central government agencies be legally required to develop and publish long-term asset management and investment plans, report on their performance against these plans, and undergo independent assessments to ensure the quality and reliability of their asset management practices.
- Right-size new investment: The Plan recommends stronger upfront scrutiny and transparency. All Crown-funded proposals should undergo independent readiness assessments before receiving funding, and business cases and budget submissions must be publicly available. Risk management practices should be strengthened through project assurance, and lessons learned from completed projects such as actual costs, timelines, and benefits should be published in a standard format to improve future planning and accountability.
Infrastructure Priorities Programme
The Infrastructure Priorities Programme (IPP) is an independent and standardised process to identify unfunded proposals and projects that will meet New Zealand’s strategic objectives, represent good value for money, and can be delivered. Central and local government agencies, iwi, and other infrastructure providers may submit prospective or current projects of national importance to the Commission to receive funding. The IPP is described as a an “investment menu”, providing the public with an insight to projects for consideration. The investment menu will be annually updated to improve transparency over upcoming nationally important infrastructure proposals and their readiness for investment. While projects are on the investment menu, they will not be allocated any funding. Instead, inclusion is an indication to decision-makers and the public that the proposed project is a priority.
Nationally significant infrastructure projects progress through a structured planning process before receiving funding. This process begins with a Strategic Assessment (Stage 1), which defines the problem or opportunity the project aims to address. It then moves to an Indicative Business Case (Stage 2), where various options are explored and tested. Finally, a Detailed Business Case (Stage 3) identifies the preferred solution and confirms its feasibility and deliverability. Each stage shifts the focus of assessment, building a stronger foundation for informed investment decisions.
Proposals are considered against three main criteria:
- Strategic alignment: whether the proposal supports future infrastructure priorities and/or improves any existing critical infrastructure systems and networks.
- Value for money: whether a proposal provides value which exceeds the costs required to deliver, operate and dispose of it.
- Deliverability: Whether a proposal can be successfully implemented and operated over its life.
17 projects, from a pool of 48 proposed projects, have currently been identified as priority projects for New Zealand. These include a wastewater treatment plant, defence force infrastructure, telecommunications networks, the replacement of the Reserve Bank’s cash centre and vault, public transport infrastructure, roading and prison redevelopment. The full menu of projects can be accessed here.
Submissions and next steps
The public consultation period for the Plan is now open until 6 August 2025. There are two submission options. Submissions can be made online by filling out a short form (located here). Alternatively, if a submitter wishes to provide in-depth, detailed feedback, it can make a submission using the Commission’s upload form template (located here).
Following consultation, the Commission will incorporate the public’s feedback and submit the finalised Plan to the government in late 2025. The government plans to formally respond to the final Plan in 2026.
Our comment
There are several challenges that are faced because of delays in getting projects to ground and the lack of pipeline predictability.
A consistent and predictable pipeline of projects is critical to avoid swings in investment cycles, or changes in priorities when there is a change of government. This stability is necessary to obtain investment in the sector, develop and retain specialist expertise recognising existing skills gaps in the workforce, and to contribute to a sustainable construction sector.
The focus on maintenance also reflects well publicised issues with aging infrastructure that transcends multiple sectors including roading and rail, water, education, energy, as well as housing and social infrastructure.
The draft Plan is a positive step forward to addressing some of the significant infrastructure challenges New Zealand faces and a positive step to try and avoid further widening the current infrastructure deficit.
We encourage those in the industry to make submissions on the Plan.
If you have any questions about the draft Plan, please get in touch with our Construction Team or your usual contact at Hesketh Henry.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this article is current at the date of publishing and is of a general nature. It should be used as a guide only and not as a substitute for obtaining legal advice. Specific legal advice should be sought where required.
