Machinery to support the infrastructure programme

The Government has made several structural changes to ensure that it can deliver on its infrastructure programme.

The portfolio of Minister for Infrastructure has been created to ensure that infrastructure receives appropriate consideration at Cabinet level. This role is complementary to the infrastructure-specific portfolios of energy, transport and ICT. The Infrastructure Minister has responsibility for ensuring that the Government's infrastructure agenda is co-ordinated and the Minister has a broader remit that extends to social infrastructure such as schools and hospitals.

The Government has also created two new bodies. The National Infrastructure Unit is a small group within the Treasury tasked with advising the Government on infrastructure issues. The National Infrastructure Advisory Board is a group of experienced practitioners from the private sector and academia.

The Infrastructure Unit's responsibilities include:

• formulating and monitoring progress on a 20-year National Infrastructure Plan
• establishing robust and reliable cross-government frameworks for infrastructure project appraisal and capital asset management
• monitoring the implementation and use of those frameworks
• providing advice and support to the Minister for Infrastructure
• providing advice to the public sector on infrastructure procurement methods including public private partnerships, and
• providing support to, and acting as a secretariat for, the National Infrastructure Advisory Board.

The Unit's purpose is not to duplicate or take over the role of other infrastructure-related government agencies but to work in co-operation with them. It will develop its policy advice to the Minister in close co-operation with the Advisory Board.

The National Infrastructure Advisory Board provides advice to the Minister and the Unit. Its role is to bring expertise, experience and a different perspective.

What is infrastructure?

Internationally, infrastructure plans often shy away from a definition of what is actually meant by the term ‘infrastructure'. Perhaps this is because there is no readily agreed or accepted definition, or perhaps because to offer a definition may unnecessarily constrain the scope of the plan or raise questions about why certain sectors have been included or omitted.

While this Plan also avoids offering a rigid definition, we recognise that it is helpful to provide some idea of the parameters within which it has been developed.

Infrastructure is sometimes defined as the fixed, long-lived structures that facilitate the production of goods and services, both physical and institutional. More specifically, infrastructure refers to physical network infrastructure, principally transport, water and energy and communications.

The notion of infrastructure used in the New Zealand National Infrastructure Plan falls somewhere between these two ideas. The Plan focuses on physical infrastructure of national significance that has a direct impact on productivity and living standards, such as transport, communications, water and energy. It also pays particular attention to three of the more capital-intensive sectors within central government services as a means of highlighting the strategic changes in asset management that Government seeks to achieve though the Plan.

During consultation on the Plan, we received many suggestions about the sectors or categories of infrastructure that were not included. These included: tertiary education, science infrastructure, flood protection, solid waste, the conservation estate, open space and ‘green' infrastructure, tourist and visitor infrastructure, cultural and sporting facilities, housing, and the local distribution part of the electricity transmission system.

We acknowledge that there are many important physical investments that could be broadly defined as infrastructure but that do not form part of the National Infrastructure Plan. However, this does not mean that the Government is not undertaking policy work or investing in these areas, and in many of them the work programmes are significant. Future iterations of the Plan may address these sectors or work areas.

Exclusions

The National Infrastructure Plan is not intended to:

• be an exhaustive list of all infrastructure projects that will proceed over the next 20 years
• provide more specificity or certainty about future projects than is already provided by individual sectoral plans and strategies
• provide additional funding beyond what has already either been allocated in the government’s annual budget or signalled in the fiscal strategy
• be directive, or replace the government’s budget process as the place where trade-offs between competing investment priorities are considered and resolved, or
• be a funding or policy commitment set in stone – it is indicative and provisional and will be revised according to new information about community preferences, patterns of demand, demographics, economic performance, and environmental constraints.