New Zealand is facing a massive infrastructure funding challenge, with billions of dollars needed to repair and modernise public assets across the country.
Estimates suggest local governments alone require an additional $52 billion to address essential services such as roads, flood protection systems, and water infrastructure. In contrast, the full national cost, including state highways, railways, hospitals, schools, and emergency services, remains uncertain.
According to a report by Glenn McConnell of Stuff, Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop said estimates he had reviewed placed the total infrastructure deficit at “anywhere between $100 and $200 billion”. The figure reflects the cost of repairing and upgrading ageing public assets nationwide.
Later on Tuesday, Bishop is expected to outline the Government’s strategy for funding and delivering infrastructure projects. Speaking ahead of the announcement, he told Stuff he expected “many people will be quite shocked” by the condition of public infrastructure and the scale of maintenance required, as reported by Stuff.
Recent weather-related disruptions have highlighted the problem. Storms forced the closure of railways and roads in several regions, while strong winds halted train services in Wellington.
On the same day, council-owned utility Wellington Water discharged untreated sewage onto the southern coast. Water safety alerts and flooding concerns also affected communities in Christchurch and the Wairarapa, with some schools in the lower North Island closing due to transport disruptions and flood risks.
As climate-related “severe weather events” become more frequent, infrastructure repair costs continue to rise, Stuff has reported.
Bishop said the Government would need to make difficult funding decisions.
“It’s really quite sobering,” he said.
He said protecting every part of the country’s roughly 11,000km state highway network was unrealistic, particularly as new projects, including the National Party’s proposed “roads of national significance”, add pressure to budgets.
“There is, of course, a limit. Money is not limitless. And so there is a level at which we say ‘you can improve things to some extent’, but you can’t always protect every part of the state highway network from severe weather events.
“We are where we are. New Zealand is where it is. And the weather is going to keep happening. We can’t future-proof everything from the weather, but where it’s cost-effective and sensible to do that, we will do that,” he said, as quoted by Stuff.
Bishop added that maintaining and upgrading existing infrastructure was often cheaper than building new systems, although replacement projects sometimes provided long-term savings.
Nick Leggett, chair of Infrastructure New Zealand, said the issue was less about spending more money and more about improving how funds were used. He noted that while New Zealand’s infrastructure spending was comparable to the OECD average, outcomes were poor, Stuff has reported.
“It’s not about writing bigger cheques,” he said.
He said adapting infrastructure to extreme weather would require long-term planning and difficult choices.
“Adapting to more extreme weather is within our grasp, over a period of time, if we have the right mindset,” he said, as quoted by Stuff.
Leggett said rebuilding damaged infrastructure often meant simply restoring what existed before, rather than improving resilience.
So when infrastructure needed replacing, he said Government should look to “build back better”.
But, he agreed with Bishop; there wasn’t always a case to build back better.
“Then,” he asked, “do we even build it back?”
“Are we wasting our time in some places, and do we need to have some wider conversations? I think New Zealanders are up for those conversations,” Leggett said.
Chlöe Swarbrick, co-leader of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, stated that the country could afford climate-resilient infrastructure if its tax policy were to change.
“We can afford to fix these things if we fix the tax system, if we are willing to fairly tax polluters, and we are willing to generate and direct that revenue to build our infrastructure and to build our resilience,” she said, Stuff has quoted.
She pointed to the Climate Emergency Response Fund introduced under the previous Labour-Green government, funded through emissions trading revenue. Swarbrick criticised the coalition Government for ending the programme in 2024.
“They decided to gut all of that and take the money to put into trickle-down tax cuts ... which has served precisely nobody in this country, as the cost of living/cost of greed crisis has ramped up, along with the climate crisis,” Swarbrick argued, as quoted by Stuff.
She also criticised the Government’s climate adaptation planning after Climate Minister Simon Watts released a shorter National Adaptation Framework to replace earlier work led by former minister James Shaw.
“I have tried really, really hard to work constructively with this Government on climate mitigation and adaptation, because, ultimately, nobody wins as politicians bicker and the planet burns. But I have no words for you about how much New Zealand has been screwed around by this,” Swarbrick said, as quoted by Stuff.
“The minister seems quite happy to wave around a pamphlet when what we needed was a fully funded plan.”
Watts defended the framework, saying it provided clear direction and had already supported resilience planning, including the development of a national flood map.
“What we have seen, already, as a result of earlier weather events, is that infrastructure is being rebuilt with more resilience.
“The events we’ve seen in the last 48 hours reinforce that this is an area of priority for our Government,” he said, Stuff has quoted.
However, he acknowledged that long-term funding decisions would need to be addressed in future budgets.
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