Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Good afternoon, everyone. Today I’d like to talk to you about progress the Government has made on our Going for Housing Growth agenda. I’m also excited to announce policy decisions that will improve infrastructure funding and financing to get more houses built.

Thank you to Local Government New Zealand for hosting this meeting. It is crucial that central and local government, work together in the areas of housing, planning reform, and transport to unlock New Zealand’s potential.

NEW ZEALAND’S HOUSING CHALLENGES

Let’s start with an overview of our housing challenge.

Over the last three decades real house prices in New Zealand increased more than any other OECD country. According to the OECD’s Better Life Index, we also rank 40^th out of 41 countries for housing affordability – just in front of the Slovak Republic.

Put simply, our housing market has held us back economically and socially:

• New Zealanders spend a larger share of their income on housing – meaning less disposable income can go towards goods, services, and investments,
• In 2022, more than half of all household wealth was tied up in land and houses,
• Homeownership rates are near their lowest in 80 years,
• Young people are leaving New Zealand to find better opportunities, and
• There are 20,300 families on the social housing wait list.

But it hasn’t always been like this. Just 23 years ago in 2002, New Zealand had a house price to wage ratio of 3:1. Now, house prices outstrip wages by over 6:1.

The worst part about this is that we have known about our housing crisis – and how to fix it – for over a decade.

In fact, the first two recommendations in the Productivity Commission’s 2012 inquiry into housing affordability were:

1. For central and local government to free up more land for housing in the inner city, suburbs, and city edge; and
2. To ensure greater discipline around charging for growth infrastructure. Since then, report after report and inquiry after inquiry has found that our planning system, particularly restrictions on the supply of developable urban land, are at the heart of our housing affordability challenge.

This Government has seen the evidence, listened, and is getting on with the job.

I am determined to fix our housing crisis by addressing the root cause of the problem, focusing on the fundamentals, and treating housing as a complete and dynamic system.

Getting the settings for housing and land markets right will do three things:

1. Lift economic growth and productivity,
2. Reduce the social consequences of unaffordable housing, and
3. Help us get the Government’s books back in order.

HOUSING IS AN ENABLER OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND PROSPERITY

I want to spend a bit of time focusing on the relationship between housing and economic growth.

Housing is a basic human need, and it is also an enabler of productivity, and for decades, New Zealand has suffered from a productivity disease.

As Paul Krugman so famously observed, “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it’s almost everything.”

Productivity growth is a key driver of our standard of living and prosperity.

It will probably surprise – and I hope alarm you – to learn that our productivity is closer to places like Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic than it is to Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, or the United States.

In other words, our productivity rates are on par with countries that endured 40 years of communism.

To turn this around, the Government is focused on going for growth, whether that’s in trade, foreign investment, innovation and technology, competition, infrastructure, or housing – the whole shebang.

It is not going to be easy to really get growth and productivity going in New Zealand. But, in my view, getting the underlying settings housing and land markets right will do a lot of the heavy lifting.

There is now a mountain of economic evidence that cities are engines of productivity, and the evidence shows bigger is better.

In New Zealand, it is estimated that doubling a city’s population could increase output by 3.5%. And, on average, workers in cities earn one third more than their non-urban counterparts.

Throughout history, cities have been the hub of innovation. Think 15^th century Florence, 17^th century Amsterdam, 18^th century London, and San Francisco today.

Cities are powerful engines of growth because they foster agglomeration economies – which are the benefits that occur when firms and people cluster together. When people are close, we can more effectively:

• Share infrastructure, supply chains, and capital,
• Match skills to jobs, and
• Learn from each through the exchange of knowledge and ideas.

A floor filled with smart people working next to each other and chatting over coffee, in a building filled with floors, in a city full of buildings, unsurprisingly, enables greater opportunities.

Proximity encourages collaboration and innovation.

So, the question is, are we making the most out of New Zealand’s cities?

If we are honest with ourselves, the answer is no.

Quite often I experience ‘housing utopia whiplash’ – one article says, “don’t put intensification here, we need to protect the wooden villas”, another says “don’t do greenfield development, it contributes to more emissions”.

But if you can’t go up or out, you can’t go anywhere.

To make housing more affordable, our cities need to growth both up and out – we need bigger cities and, we need more houses.

Having more affordable housing would also free up more disposable income and capital for investment in businesses, capital, infrastructure, and people.

Modelling shows, that under an ‘ambitious scenario’ of removing all supply-side constraints, New Zealand could increase output per worker by up to 1.6%, increase workers moving from Australia to New Zealand’s high-productivity regions by up to 7.2%, and increase GDP by up to 8.4%.

Now, removing all supply-side constraints is not realistic – but what I do know is that we can do so much more than we are now.

ACTIONS ON GOING FOR HOUSING GROWTH SO FAR

In July last year, I outlined our Going for Housing Growth policy:

• Pillar 1: freeing up land for development and removing unnecessary planning barriers,
• Pillar 2: improving infrastructure funding and financing to support urban growth, and
• Pillar 3: providing incentives for communities and councils to support growth.

We have made good progress on Pillar 1 which includes Housing Growth Targets for Tier 1 and 2 councils to “live-zone” 30-years of housing demand, making it easier for cities to expand, strengthening the intensification provisions in the NPS-UD, putting in new rules requiring councils to enable mixed-used development, and abolishing minimum floor areas and balcony requirements.

Details about how Pillar 1 will be implemented will be announced in the coming months.

Today, I will announce policy decisions Cabinet has made on Pillar 2, which I will get to shortly.

Officials are also working away on Pillar 3 in the context of Pillars 1 and 2, which will ensure that councils and communities face strong incentives – carrots or sticks – for growth.

To help fix the housing crisis, the Government has also:

• Passed the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill to make sensible changes to tenancy rules to encourage landlords into the market;
• Passed legislation to make it easier for international investment into “Build to Rent” housing;
• Passed the Fast-track Approvals Act which makes it much easier to consent large-scale housing developments;
• Funded 1,500 new social housing places delivered by Community Housing Providers; and
• Established a Residential Development Underwrite scheme to support construction during the market downturn.

Before the next election, we will have also replaced the Resource Management Act with new legislation. More on that next month.

ANNOUNCEMENTS ON PILLAR 2

Now let’s talk about Pillar 2 – improving infrastructure funding and financing to support urban growth.

I know central government has given local government a hard time about not zoning enough land for housing. I’ve done it once or twice before.

And it’s true, you haven’t.

But what I have heard from you and housing experts, is that freeing up urban land is not enough on its own. We also need to ensure the timely provision of infrastructure.

Put simply, you can’t have housing without land, water, transport, and other community infrastructure. It’s a package.

However, under the status quo, councils and developers face significant challenges to fund and finance enabling infrastructure for housing.

I hope you’ll agree with me that existing tools like Development Contributions (DCs), and the Infrastructure Funding and Financing (IFF) Act are not fit for purpose.

We want to move to a future state where funding and financing tools enable a responsive supply of infrastructure where it is commercially viable to build new houses.

This will shift market expectations of future scarcity, bring down the cost of land for new housing, and improve incentives to develop land sooner instead of land banking.

To achieve this future, our overarching approach is that ‘growth pays for growth’.

So, today, I am excited to announce five key changes to our infrastructure funding settings that will get more houses built:

• The first is replacing DCs with a Development Levy System,
• The second is establishing regulatory oversight of Development Levies to ensure charges are fair and appropriate,
• The third is increasing the flexibility of targeted rates,
• The fourth is improving the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act, and
• The fifth is broadening existing tools to support value capture.

Essentially, we are developing a flexible toolkit of mechanisms to ensure growth pays for growth”. There is no funding and financing mechanism that will suit all developments. But the flexible toolkit I’m about to outline will help ensure a responsive supply of infrastructure.

Development Levies system

Let’s start with replacing DCs with a Development Levy system.

Under the status quo, councils can only recover infrastructure costs for planned, costed, and in-sequence developments. In effect, this means councils can only recover costs if they have certainty about when, where, and what development occurs.

But this level of certainty isn’t realistic. We don’t live in Ebenezer Howard’s “Garden City” or “planners paradise”, and we’re not stuck in the Soviet Union. We want growth to be demand-led, not planner-led.

We know DCs aren’t working, because councils haven’t been able to effectively recover growth costs, leaving ratepayers to pick up the cheque.

For example, Auckland Council estimates that $330m in growth infrastructure costs for Drury will be met by ratepayers, not by the beneficiaries of the infrastructure. Similarly, Tauranga City Council has reported 16 percent under-recovery for projects that were included in DC policies, which saw over $70m of debt expected to be transferred to ratepayers.

Not only is this unfair, but it makes existing residents resistant to growth.

The political economy of housing is stacked against actually building it. It is not surprising that existing ratepayers mobilise against new housing when they’re required to pick up the tab for the infrastructure required for it.

DCs were designed in 2002 for a world with a strategy of “urban containment”, where councils put rings around and ceilings on top of our cities.

The old model was to plan cities carefully.

So, we sequenced, and planned, and costed the infrastructure, then urban land was dripped slowly into the market. This meant that councils had lots of control over the release of urban land.

But these constraints also created a scorching hot land and housing market driven by artificial scarcity.

Pillar 1 is about upending the system by live zoning 30 years’ worth of housing demand at any one-time for Tier 1 and 2 councils, flooding the market with development opportunities and fundamentally making housing more affordable.

We are deliberately upending the artificial planning and zoning constraints that have made it difficult to use land for housing.

Once Pillar 1 goes live and there is an abundance of urban land, councils won’t be able to plan or cost growth in detail anywhere, everywhere, all at once – it’s simply not feasible.

So, we need a flexible funding and financing system to match the flexible planning system.

That’s Development Levies.

Under this new system, councils and other infrastructure providers will be able to charge developers for their share of aggregate infrastructure growth costs across an urban area over the long-term.

Development Levies will provide far more flexibility for councils and other infrastructure providers to recover costs for any in-sequence development – whether it planned and costed, or not.

Quite simply, this tool will respond to growth and recover costs, no matter where the growth occurs within land zoned for housing.

For areas that are zoned for housing – remembering there will be a lot more of it under our new system – Development Levies will look like:

• Separate levies that are ring-fenced for each specific infrastructure service such as drinking water, wastewater, and transport;
• Specific “levy zones”, which are expected to cover pre-defined urban areas that are larger than most current DC catchments;
• Discretion for councils to impose additional charges on top of the base levy in specific locations that require a particularly high-cost service;
• A prescribed methodology that councils and infrastructure providers must follow to determine aggregate growth costs and standardised growth units; and
• Consideration of different models of infrastructure delivery including support for first-mover developers and recovering council costs for infrastructure owned by another entity.

For out-of-sequence development, there will be a process councils or water service providers must follow to determine an appropriate levy – or Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act levies could be used. As I say, this is a toolkit of approaches to ensure infrastructure is funded and built.

The new Development Levy system has many benefits.

It will reduce financial risks for councils and could moderate rate increases, better incentivising communities to support growth.

It will improve the predictability of infrastructure charges. Where these charges are credibly signalled in advance, we expect developers will account for added costs in shopping for developable land, lowering the amount they are willing to pay.

It will increase transparency and reduce administrative complexity for councils.

Regulatory oversight

The second change is to create regulatory oversight of the development levy regime.

Councils can have monopolistic pricing power as the sole provider of certain infrastructure.

The new levy system will restrict local authority discretion about various matters, such as setting the methodology used to allocate project costs.

But it is important that prices are fair and appropriate, so we will also establish regulatory oversight of Development Levies, which will be integrated with the regulatory oversight of water services and rates.

While the wider system is being designed, we will put in interim oversight arrangements, which may include requirements around transparency and information disclosure, and having an independent assessment of proposed levies.

Work is underway on this area right now and the government will be engaging with councils and developers in the coming months to get the details right.

Increasing the flexibility of targeted rates

Now moving onto targeted rates.

I understand that not everyone, particularly small councils, will be up for using the Development Levy system. So, we are also making changes to targeted rates to support urban growth.

We will allow councils to set targeted rates that apply when a rating unit is created at the subdivision stage. This will enable councils to set targeted rates that only apply to new developments. And, for small councils, this could be used as a good alternative to Development Levies.

Additionally, this change will enable targeted rates and Development Levies to be used together where projects benefit existing residents and provide for growth.

Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act changes

Fourth, we will be making changes to the IFF Act.

The IFF Act was passed in 2020 so that developers could freely arrange private funding and financing solutions for enabling infrastructure. It was supposed to allow developers to bypass the issue of relying on councils for the timely provision of infrastructure.

However, in the five years since it was passed, no levy proposals have been received for new residential developments, likely due to its complexity and administrative burden.

My Undersecretary Simon Court has been leading the work here and he will speak to the full suite of changes we are making shortly.

But at a high-level, the Government has agreed to make several remedial amendments to improve the effectiveness of the Act, particularly for developer-led projects. These changes will remove unnecessary barriers and make the overall process simpler.

Broadening existing tools to support cost recovery and value capture

But what I am really excited about is broadening existing tools like the IFF Act to support value capture and cost recovery.

As a general principle, those who benefit from publicly funded infrastructure should help contribute to the cost of it. New state highways, for example, create benefits for private landowners by unlocking capacity for new development or improving journeys for existing households.

New busways or rail lines clearly create benefits for those located near the stations.

So, we will enable IFF Act levies to be charged for major transport projects, e.g., projects delivered by NZTA.

This change has the potential to kickstart our embrace of Transit Oriented Development or TOD.

TOD promotes compact, mixed-use, pedestrian friendly cities, with development clustered around, and integrated with, mass transit. The idea is to have as many jobs, houses, services and amenities as possible around public transport stations.

This is not an untested theory: transit-oriented development has been adopted across world-class in cities like Stockholm, Copenhagen, Tokyo, and Singapore – all of which use some form of value capture.

We looked at establishing a complicated new tool that tries to calculate land value uplift to essentially tax windfall gains, but we have concluded that it is fine in theory but much harder in reality.

Our preference is for a much simpler solution that builds on existing legislation – getting beneficiaries to pay for some proportion of the cost of the investment through infrastructure levies.

Henry George would certainly approve.

Conclusion

Today’s announcement outlines our plans to establish a flexible funding and financing system – Pillar 2 – to complement our new flexible planning system – Pillar 1.

These are some big changes, and it will take some time to get them right. Our aim is to have legislation in the House by September this year, to come into effect next year.

What I can promise is that my officials will engage with councils and developers to ensure we create a future state that works:

Where urban land is abundant, the supply of infrastructure is responsive, and where there are loads of development opportunities and housing choice for New Zealanders.

Today’s changes to funding and financing tools, together with freeing up urban land both inside and at the edge of our cities is a massive feat for:

• urban nerds,
• proponents of economic growth,
• champions of housing affordability, and
• all New Zealanders really.

Solving our housing crisis is my top priority. It will mean a more productive, wealthier, and more prosperous New Zealand and I won’t rest until that’s done.

Thank you.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Check against delivery.

Kia ora koutou.

Thank you, Phil, for the opportunity to speak to you today to the Business NZ Health Forum.

Since my appointment as Health Minister, I’ve spent time where it matters most – on the frontline, listening to the people our health system is here to serve.

Let me tell you about just a few stories I have heard.

There are many positive stories of people receiving exceptional healthcare:

• A Tauranga woman who recently shared her gratitude with me that her chemotherapy drug is now funded because of the Government’s record investment in new cancer drugs.
• A young person in distress, whose family isn’t sure what to do, being helped by compassionate youth mental health services to work through how to cope.
• A security guard I met who said he went to an Emergency Department and was seen and discharged in 2.5 hours.

But some are more grim:

• An elderly man who requires hip and knee surgery and has been living in pain while they wait for their operations.
• A cancer survivor who is overdue for their colonoscopy.
• A person who is worried about a friend that has been waiting for surgery for over for 15 months, only to find out it has been cancelled.

The failure of our health system doesn’t stop at waiting lists.

• I’ve heard of a grandmother sent home after waiting for hours in ED, only to return shortly after having had a stroke.
• A grandfather lying in a hospital ward for days, sick and in pain, not knowing when—or if—a doctor would come to see him and tell him what is wrong.
• And I’ve heard far too many stories over the past five weeks of people who are alive today, not because the system looked after them, but because their wives, husbands, daughters, and sons had to make lots of noise until someone paid attention.

That’s not a health system that works.

And if you ask the doctors, nurses, midwives, and other health professionals who keep the system running, they’ll tell you the same thing.

They are just as frustrated—because they got into this job to care for people and provide world-class healthcare to New Zealanders.

But the system is failing their patients and them too.

Somewhere along the way, our health system became desensitised to patients.

There’s often too much focus on what the unions, the colleges, or professional lobby groups say, and not enough focus on what the patient says.

Because in healthcare, the customer is the patient—the mum with the newborn, the tradie, the farmer, the kaumātua, the grandmother.

They should be at the heart of every decision we make.

People working in health have been conditioned to substandard management and conditioned to giving into groups which exert pressure on them.

This is not the standard we should accept in New Zealand.

That’s why we must fix the system—so that every patient gets the care they deserve, and every healthcare professional is empowered to do the job they trained so long and hard for.

New Zealanders expect better. And under this Government, we will deliver it.

A long-term problem made worse by Labour

Let’s be clear—this is not a new problem.

Our health system has been overloaded and under pressure for years. But the decisions of the previous government made it significantly worse. We inherited a health system in a state of turmoil.

In the middle of a pandemic—when New Zealand needed stability—they ripped the entire structure apart.

They forced through one of the biggest bureaucratic restructures in our history, abolishing 20 District Health Boards overnight and replacing them with a single, centralised bureaucracy.

The reforms stripped decision-making away from regions and districts.

They had no plan for how it would actually help patients.

Key health targets – used to ensure the system was delivering for patients – were dumped.

Instead of supporting frontline workers, they created another layer of bureaucratic management and confusion at the top.

Instead of focusing on patient care and ensuring people didn’t get sicker languishing on ballooning waiting lists, they produced internal reports and shuffled job titles in the head office.

Instead of keeping control of spending, they lost complete oversight of the system’s finances.

To put it frankly, the previous government’s 2022 health reforms were rushed and poorly implemented, with disastrous results.

Most importantly, those reforms eroded the trust and confidence of New Zealanders in getting access to the health services they need.

It’s not just our view. It’s not just what frontline workers and patients say. It’s now documented fact.

The Deloitte Report – Labour’s health system failure in black and white

Today, a report by Deloitte titled the ‘Financial Review of Health New Zealand’—an independent report, not written by politicians, but by financial and operational experts – is being released on Health New Zealand’s website.

It delivers a damning verdict on the state of our health system when we took office 16 months ago.

The report shows, in black and white, that under the previous government, Health New Zealand lost control of the critical levers that drive financial and delivery outcomes.

In simple terms:

• The agency that was supposed to run our health system had no idea how it was spending its money or the results it was achieving.
• Costs spiralled out of control, with deficits mounting each month.
• Basic financial oversight collapsed, meaning no accountability, no performance tracking, and no ability to measure success or failure.
• No systems in place to manage funds appropriately.

Meanwhile, Labour’s plan was to support unions over patients.

As I mentioned earlier, they scrapped health targets, so they didn’t even know what success looked like.

The result?

• Elective surgeries plummeted. In 2017, 1,037 people were waiting over four months for elective treatment. By the time Labour left office, that number had grown to 27,497. That’s an increase of over 2,551 percent.
• Emergency department wait times blew out. When National left office, almost 90 percent of patients were seen within six hours. By 2023, that dropped below 70 percent.
• Childhood immunisation rates collapsed. In 2017, 92.4 percent of children were fully immunised at 24 months. By 2023, that number hit 83 percent.
• Primary healthcare was ignored. More people than ever couldn’t see a healthcare professional when they needed one.

This is a system under significant pressure and a system which was recklessly mismanaged under the past government, thrown into turmoil at the worst possible time, and left to drift without accountability.

But that changes today.

Funding for Health

There is always a need for more investment in health, but more money isn’t the only solution.

This Government has invested a record funding boost of $16.68 billion (over three years) in health to help the sector plan for the future, and that includes funding expected growth.

The funding boost provided by this Government is enabling Health New Zealand to retain capacity at the frontline and deliver more services to New Zealanders.

There are more frontline staff, including more nurses than ever before and more medical staff, allied and scientific staff, and care and support staff.

Since it was set up, Health New Zealand’s frontline staff grew by almost 6,500 people, alongside achieving back-office efficiencies.

Remuneration for health workforces has also increased.

Since 2014, average salaries for nurses and midwives have increased by almost 70 percent, while average salaries for teachers and police have only risen by approximately 35-40 percent over the same period.

The average salary of a registered nurse (including senior nurses) is currently around $125,660, including overtime and allowances. This aligns with nurses in New South Wales.

Yet we are not seeing the results we have invested in.

Productivity is declining and has not kept pace with historic levels of funding and workforce growth.

For example, in the decade between 2014 and 2024, core Health operating funding almost doubled, but the number of first specialist assessments undertaken only increased by 17 percent. The waiting list more than doubled during this period to almost 195,000 people.

And as at August last year, over 40 percent of adults needing to see a GP couldn’t get a consultation within a week of when they needed to see one.

Every single dollar must deliver better outcomes for patients.

More money going in must mean more results coming out.

But under Labour, we saw more money with worse outcomes, longer waitlists, and declining service levels. That is simply unacceptable.

What we have done – A back-to-basics approach

Since being in office, this Government has been taking action and we are getting results:

• We reinstated health targets—because what gets measured, gets done.
• We’re doing more operations. Last year, the health system carried out over 144,000 elective procedures – 10,000 more than the previous 12 months.
• We are moving resources back to the frontline, cutting wasteful bureaucracy.
• The health workforce is being paid more.
• We’re investing in health infrastructure—building new hospitals, upgrading existing ones, and modernising equipment. There are currently 66 Ministerially approved health infrastructure projects, worth a cumulative $6.3 billion in the pipeline.
• We have begun stabilising the system, although there’s still a long way to go.

But let me be clear—this is just the beginning.

My five key priorities as Minister

Healthcare is a top priority for everyone in New Zealand.

I see it every day as an electorate MP, a father of three young children, and as Health Minister travelling the country.

Yes, there will always be a need for more money in healthcare, and as Minister, I will fight every single day to invest more and deliver more for you.

I am proud of the investment this Government is putting into health.

However, I will also be holding the system to account to deliver more for the funding that is being invested.

Investing in primary care and funding additional operations are at the heart of my five clear priorities as Health Minister. They are:

1. Stabilising Health New Zealand’s governance and accountability allowing it to focus on delivering the basics
2. Reducing emergency department wait times
3. Delivering a boost in elective surgery volumes to get on top of the backlog and reduce waiting lists
4. Fixing primary care to ensure easier access
5. Providing clarity on the health infrastructure investment pipeline.

1. Focusing Health New Zealand on delivering the basics

My first priority is getting the basics right. It follows years of worsening results being the only thing being delivered.

We are going to turn this around by focusing on delivery and achieving targets. Our health targets matter because they demonstrate performance.

But it’s not enough to have them on paper—we must deliver real results.

Over the last few years, the previous Government’s decision to restructure in the middle of a pandemic—and to remove those targets—led us to where we are now.

Too many people are waiting too long for critical assessments and treatments.

Health New Zealand should run a health system, not a bureaucracy. Instead of focusing on patients, it got lost in process. That changes now.

No more excuses. We measure success in one way: better outcomes for patients.

Health New Zealand has struggled to come together as a cohesive team that supports the organisation to deliver for patients.

Senior Leadership Team members have only just begun weekly in-person meetings, and have continued to operate from different offices, despite the majority living in Auckland and the organisation being two and a half years old.

This has meant the organisation has failed to create a cohesive team to lead the organisation forward.

Today, I’m outlining my expectations for Health NZ to deliver a nationally planned and consistent, but locally delivered, health system.

I expect core services (infrastructure, data, digital, HR, comms) will sit at head office, with national executive leadership focused on national programmes, shared services, overall governance and planning and empowering districts.

I have directed the Commissioner to accelerate the shift to local decision-making and service delivery, and set a requirement for local delivery plans to be developed. I expect this to be done by July.

This will enable local leaders to plan effectively, be clear about their budgets, allocate resource to where it’s most needed, and deliver better outcomes for their communities.

Because all healthcare is local.

I expect there to be strong regional coordination to support local delivery, with singular lines of accountability flowing from the national executive level through to the frontline.

Under Labour, financial controls vanished, clinical input was lost, and local districts were disempowered. We are restoring that.

Today, I have issued a new letter of expectation and Health New Zealand has released its delivery plan to reflect this.

I will also bring back a board for Health New Zealand.

Now that the plan is set, it is time to begin the process of transitioning to traditional governance.

In the coming weeks, nominations open for the new board. If you have passion for healthcare and a demonstrated track record of delivery, we need you.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Commissioners for their work to date and I look forward to working with them as they deliver on their plan and as we transition to a board.

2. Fixing Primary Healthcare – easier access for everyone

My second priority is ensuring timely GP access.

New Zealand has a shortage of family doctors, who play an important role in helping Kiwis to stay well and out of emergency departments.

But last year a third of GP practices had their books closed, forcing people to emergency departments.

And if you can’t book in to see your GP or nurse when you need one, you end up in ED when you shouldn’t have to.

No one should wait weeks to see a GP and we are set on fixing that.

Historically, more funding has been invested in more costly hospital and specialist services at the expense of primary and community care.

Over the past five years, hospital funding has increased at a higher rate than primary and community funding. Hospital funding went up by almost 53 percent, while primary and community funding increased by 41 percent.

This means we’re missing opportunities for earlier and less costly interventions.

We must shift the dial towards primary care, both to improve access for New Zealanders and because it is the fiscally responsible thing to do.

We have already made a number of important announcements this week about how we will improve access to primary care including:

• Making it easier for New Zealanders to see a doctor. We’re providing up to 100 clinical placements for overseas-trained doctors to work in primary care. This will support their transition into GP practices that need them most.
• We are also ramping up the number of trainee GPs to give Kiwis better access to healthcare in their communities. We’re introducing a funded primary care pathway to registration for up to 50 New Zealand-trained graduate doctors each year from 2026.
• We’re training more new doctors. During the term of this Government, medical school placement have increased by 100 places each year.
• We’re investing to increase the number of nurses in primary care. This includes supporting GP practices and other providers outside hospitals to hire up to 400 graduate registered nurses a year from this year.
• Improving access to 24/7 digital care. This will provide all New Zealanders with better and faster access to video consultations with New Zealand-registered clinicians, such as GPs and nurse practitioners, for urgent problems, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. People will be able to be diagnosed, get prescriptions, be referred for lab tests or radiology, and have urgent referrals organised.

These measures focus on giving our primary care workforce the numbers and support they need, so that when you or your whānau need to see a GP, you can—without facing weeks-long wait times or closed books.

Strengthening urgent and after-hours care will also be a focus of mine as part of our plan to enable faster access to primary care, and work on this is underway.

This week I also announced that Health New Zealand has agreed to deliver a $285 million uplift to funding over three years for general practice from 1 July, in addition to the capitation uplift general practice receives annually.

This will be incentivise GPs to improve access and patient outcomes – especially around improved vaccination rates and supporting family doctors to undertake minor planned services.

This is just the start – there is more to do. Health New Zealand has work underway to rethink how we fund primary care to make it faster, more accessible, and more sustainable.

3. Reducing ED wait times

My third priority is emergency departments, which have seen lengthy wait times continue to increase since targets were scrapped.

The ED target is not just about making sure patients are seen quickly but it pushes every part of the hospital to work smoothly.

Emergency departments are the beating hearts of hospitals – if they are operating efficiently and effectively, that reflects the effectiveness and efficiency of every part of the hospital. If wait times are too slow in the ED department it indicates problems throughout the hospital.

I expect Health New Zealand to:

1. Empower clinicians at local levels to fix bottlenecks in real time.
2. Integrate the primary care reforms, so fewer preventable cases end up in ED. This will be done by hiring and training more doctors and nurses and ensuring New Zealanders have access to round-the-clock care.

The relationship between our hospitals and primary care is critically important, but has broken down in recent years and needs to be fixed.

Empowering the primary care sector can help keep people out of hospital and manage patients much more cost effectively in our communities.

We need our hospitals working with our primary health care providers to achieve this, and we need many more hospital services delivered locally in communities rather than centrally in our hospitals.

We are restoring a focus on ED shorter stay targets, forcing real improvements across the entire hospital.

We want to see 95 percent of people admitted, discharged, or transferred from an emergency department within six hours.

4. Clearing the elective surgery backlog

My fourth priority is elective surgeries, where 27,497 people were waiting more than four months for surgeries they desperately needed in September 2023—a number that was 1,037 under National in 2017.

This backlog is unacceptable and has unfortunately grown since we came to Government.

But we have arrested the decline in the number of operations. As I mentioned earlier, last financial year, the health system carried out 10,000 more elective procedures than in the previous 12 months.

However, we must still urgently increase the volume of surgeries.

The elective surgery wait list target isn’t just about measuring performance of the system, it is about people. Behind every number is an individual, a family, many waiting in pain and families anxious for their loved ones to have the surgery they need.

We can’t keep doing things the way we currently do it.

At the moment Health NZ undertakes both elective surgery, and also responds to acute need, with planned elective surgery often being disrupted by acute need, leaving patients waiting for treatment and waitlists continuing to grow.

At the same time, the small amount of planned care that is outsourced to the private sector is often done on an ad hoc basis, meaning Health New Zealand is paying premium prices.

This practice must stop. Kiwis waiting in pain for an operation aren’t worried about who is delivering the operation, they just want it done as quickly as possible.

I want to see Health NZ both lifting its own performance on elective surgeries, but also partnering closely with the private sector to ensure we can get on top of the waitlists and get kiwis the operations they need as quickly as possible.

By partnering with the private sector, we can ensure people get the care they need, and Health New Zealand can achieve value for money through long-term contracts with the private sector.

I expect Health New Zealand to work closely with ACC – which already has many of these arrangements in place – to ensure value for money for taxpayers and faster treatment for patients.

Today I am pleased to announce the first part of this plan with Health New Zealand investing $50 million between now and the end of June this year to reduce the backlog of people waiting for elective surgeries. That will see an extra 10,579 procedures carried out between now and the middle of this year, with work also underway now to negotiate longer term agreements.

This will improve the quality of life of thousands of New Zealanders. It will mean people can return to work, take up hobbies again, and continue to build precious memories with loved ones.

I can also announce that I have asked Health New Zealand to work with the private sector to agree a set of principles that will underpin future outsourcing contracts. This will include:

• Ending the use of expensive ad hoc, shorter-term contracts for elective surgeries.
• Negotiating longer-term, multi-year agreements to deliver better value for money and better outcomes for patients.
• Agreeing on plans to recruit, share, and train staff which already bridge both the public and private hospitals.

Long term, I want as much planned care as possible to be delivered in partnership with the private sector, freeing public hospitals for acute needs.

However, this needs to be done in a way which is mutually beneficial for our public health system and our workforce.

To be clear, the system remains publicly funded, so everyone has access, but this will allow Health New Zealand to leverage private capacity to reduce wait times for patients.

5. Investing in health infrastructure – building for the future

My fifth priority is infrastructure—physical and digital. Our hospitals and data systems are in dire need of upgrade.

Health New Zealand is grappling with an outdated infrastructure that is inhibiting changes to models of care that improve patient outcomes and drive efficiencies.

Currently:

• Health New Zealand has about 1,200 buildings – some have significant seismic risks, other older buildings are not clinically fit for purpose.
• Digital infrastructure is also fragmented. There are an estimated 6,000 applications and 100 digital networks. That equates to roughly one application for every 16 Health New Zealand staff members, which is unsustainable.

We need solutions. That includes:

• Investigating creating a separate Health Infrastructure Entity under Health New Zealand, to manage and deliver physical and digital assets.
• Publishing a long-term plan for health infrastructure so Kiwis know what’s being upgraded across New Zealand and can see a 10-year pipeline of capital projects
• Putting all funding and financing options on the table—this will require bold, sustainable investment.

Health infrastructure has been neglected for decades.

We’re turning that around. There are currently health infrastructure projects, worth a cumulative $6.3 billion in the pipeline.

That includes:

• A new hospital in Dunedin.
• Modern cancer treatment facilities in Hawke’s Bay and Taranaki
• The extensive facilities infrastructure remediation programme at Auckland City Hospital and Greenlane Clinical Centre, and
• Manukau Health Park and Hillmorton specialist mental health services in Christchurch.

Hospitals don’t run on press releases; they run on real investment. We are delivering that.

Stripping out bureaucracy, demanding delivery

At the end of the day, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

It comes down to results, accountabilities, and every single person in the health system playing their part.

My message to Health New Zealand is simple: I expect delivery. I expect a back-to-basics approach, with less talk and more action.

I expect a relentless focus on improving health outcomes for New Zealanders and for Health New Zealand to reallocate baseline funding to implement immediate action.

We’ve had enough talk. It’s time to fix this system.

A health system that delivers for every New Zealander

New Zealanders don’t want more reports or more excuses—they want action:

• Health targets are back.
• We’re taking action to stabilise surgery waitlists.
• More doctors and nurses are being trained and recruited.
• Hospitals are being upgraded.
• Primary care is being strengthened.

This isn’t just talk; it’s real change.

And I promise every New Zealander: we will not stop until our health system delivers timely, quality care to all.

We are embarking on this shift with urgency.

Patients come first.

And this Government will not rest until that’s a reality.

Thank you very much.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Good afternoon!

I want to acknowledge the immense amount of work Minister Bishop has done in leading this Going for Housing Growth programme – it is vitally important.

As the Minister flagged, central to Going for Housing Growth is this idea that growth should pay for growth, and a key tension in this system centres on finding a balance between certainty about where growth will occur and having the flexibility to respond to demand.

The Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act (IFFA) hits both of these things – it levies those benefitting from the infrastructure and is an important piece in this responsiveness puzzle, enabling demand-led growth without further straining councils’ balance sheets.

However, we’ve become aware of barriers to its use, so we’re making some changes to make it fit for purpose, which I’ve been tasked with leading.

IFFA background

The IFFA emerged from a great example of the market innovating to solve coordination problems and deliver benefits much sooner than the public sector could have. 

Developers saw an opportunity at Milldale to deliver housing but needed infrastructure to enable that to happen.

Unable to rely on a council constrained by its own growth plans and lack of funds, the developers set up a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to raise the finance needed to deliver the infrastructure and then levied the subsequent landowners to repay the debt.

Recognising the value of this approach, the government at the time rightly sought to codify this to be replicated around the country, culminating in the IFFA.

In addition to providing a responsive, market-led pathway to enable greenfield development, the IFFA has several benefits.

It can enable intensification in existing urban areas by funding and financing infrastructure upgrades.

As the SPV is off balance sheet, it preserves council debt headroom while delivering additional infrastructure capacity. 

It ensures revenue streams are certain and are hypothecated to the relevant infrastructure.

It ensures fairness in that those who benefit pay – it spreads the infrastructure costs over a longer period of time and, therefore, more fairly across the beneficiaries over that infrastructure’s lifespan.

Yet, its responsive, market-led vision has not been realised.

No further greenfield deal has been done since the IFFA’s Milldale inspiration, with only two city-wide levies have been struck.

We set out to understand why, and we have gone about fixing it.

Streamline levy development and approval

We’ve heard the process for standing up an IFFA transaction is unnecessarily burdensome and costly.

A range of requirements are duplicated and redundant, which slow the process without adding any real benefit.

A Minister doesn’t need to be bogged down with immaterial technical detail, and we don’t need ambiguities that arbitrarily leave some important matters neglected.

We’re making a range of detailed changes to address this.

Our focus is to ensure the right information is available in the right format at the right time to make the right decisions.

There is also an embedded suggestion that a Minister is somehow always the best arbiter of what’s reasonable and affordable, even where affordability is already internalised.

While we acknowledge the decision to impose a levy on existing ratepayers is a serious one, if a greenfield levy is proposed by the developer with skin in the game, or everyone affected otherwise consents, we are now going to take the wild approach of trusting that they’re acting in their own best interests.

Increasing uptake

Extending access to a variety of users 

Last year, Cabinet made the decision to extend the scope of the IFFA to cover water entities under Local Water Done Well, and now we’re extending it further to NZTA projects. 

This will mean major transport projects can recover a share of the infrastructure cost from those who benefit from an increase in development capacity, helping growth pay for growth and adding to the potential funding stack.

Supporting developer-led proposals

Part of the current process requires a levy to be endorsed by levy and infrastructure authorities, such as councils, before a proposal can be progressed, with no clear criteria to limit obstruction.

In pursuit of responsiveness and growth, we are making changes that will require the endorsements to be given where statutory requirements are met.

We cannot afford to give a licence to say ‘no’, so we’re not going to give it.

Deferrals

We’re also moving to enable levy payment flexibility.

While infrastructure adds value to properties which benefit, and generally increases wealth, annual levies may be difficult to provide for when property owners may not have much financial headroom.

We’re therefore introducing levy deferral options, so property owners can defer payment to a later date or until a specified triggering event. 

Ensuring deferral options are reflected clearly and transparently will mean all parties can make better decisions, including the responsible Minister through the affordability assessment.

Project eligibility

Currently, there is ambiguity about whether projects commissioned prior to when a levy proposal is submitted are eligible, so we’re clarifying that projects commissioned up to two years prior will be. 

This will extend coverage to circumstances where projects may have recently been completed but house sales have yet to occur.

Use for development levies

With the advent of the development levies Minister Bishop has just announced, we’re also making changes to help them work together with the IFFA.

If a developer is facing the prospect of big development levy for council-provided infrastructure, there may be demand for the IFFA to finance this to be repaid by future homeowners.

For this use case, we are removing the requirement that IFFA levies have a direct link to specific bulk infrastructure.

Other changes

There are a range of other changes, such as:

• SPVs getting explicit powers to commence recovery action for unpaid levies
• councils being able to request reimbursement of levy administration costs as a condition of endorsement
• introducing flexibility about where the infrastructure must be vested
• putting levies on an even keel with rates in the event of a rating sale
• several other minor, technical, and remedial tweaks.

Together, these changes will deliver a more usable pathway for IFFA deals that can be accessed by developers and others.

The objective is to deliver infrastructure that may not have been planned by councils or planned for in the timeframe that developers need it.

Conclusion

While the IFFA is relatively technical, it is a very important tool, and it has a key role in facilitating demand-led growth.

By streamlining processes and improving usability, and having National Infrastructure Funding and Financing (NIFF) engaged to assist councils and others with expertise and growing capacity, we expect the IFFA will be much more attractive and used much more widely.

We need growth, and growth must be responsive to demand.

The IFFA has a distinct and important role in delivering this.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

It is a pleasure for the New Zealand to be in Ulaanbaatar this afternoon. The welcome has been warm, even if the temperatures outside have not been. Though, your Ambassador tells me the temperature reached +1 degrees Celsius at midday today! Thank you to Foreign Minister Battsetseg for your generous hosting.

Despite our geographic distance, New Zealand and Mongolia share many commonalities: both small states committed to democracy, multilateralism, and the international rules-based order.

We also share proportional representation electoral systems, New Zealand since 1996, and Mongolia since 2024.

The New Zealand-Mongolia relationship is warm and long-standing. It is significant that this year we are marking 50 years since diplomatic relations were established in 1975. This is a seriously important milestone.

It was valuable exchanging views and experiences today with the Minister and colleagues, and discussing our respective regional and international priorities.

The New Zealand community here in Mongolia is small, but an important element to our relationship. We thank the New Zealand community – and Mongolians in New Zealand – for their support for this relationship, and for continuing to find exciting new ways to connect our countries.

Ties between our people continue to deepen. We continue to welcome Mongolian scholars to New Zealand, including through the long-standing English Language Training for Officials (“ELTO”) programme.

New Zealand is also pleased to provide targeted support to Mongolian NGOs and other groups through the New Zealand Embassy Fund. This has included support for sheep-shearer training programmes. This might sound ordinary, but shearing is a critical part of ensuring productivity!

This year we are contributing towards a rural water project, which will support over 100 families to access the water supply system. We are also helping Mongolian herders to build climate change resilience.

Once again, thank you to Foreign Minister Battsetseg and other senior Mongolian colleagues for your generous hosting on this important occasion.

And allow me to reiterate one last time what a special significance it is for me to be here today.

Thank you.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Good morning, everybody.

It’s great to see such a good cross-section of people from local government here today.

Against a backdrop of skyrocketing rates and massive cost of living pressures, a lot has been made recently of the need to go ‘back to basics’ and to ‘go for growth.’

These two things are critically linked.

Moving back to basics means consciously reducing government scope to the bare minimum and avoiding unnecessary intervention in people’s lives.

Reduced intervention frees people to do what they do best, and unlocks potential gains in efficiency, innovation, and productivity – all vital ingredients to deliver economic growth.

With this in mind, it’s heartening to join you on a day focused on showing communities value, and sharpening councils’ value stories.

However, I’m aware that the ability to sharpen value stories is inherently constrained when working with such a blunting instrument as the Resource Management Act.

The RMA’s downfall

There are endless examples of the absurdity that’s ensued under the RMA. Every week I am reading new articles, receiving new letters, and hearing new stories about the obstruction it has delivered.

I think of the letter I received from an Upper Hutt man who was blocked from cutting down a tree on his own property, assessed as dangerous by both his neighbour and an arborist – a generic pin oak not even listed on the plan.

I think of Tracy Fleet in Ashburton who, facing a similar situation, was slapped with a $7000 fine and a criminal conviction for pruning a tree so dangerous insurers were turning away, after a years-long, strung-out saga that was also swallowing up her ratepayer dollars in the process.

I think of Curt and Tricia Zant whose Hawke’s Bay farm was slapped with an ‘Outstanding Natural Feature’ classification in the council’s plan, restricting their ability to invest time, care, and capital into their land to drive the growth we’re seeking, without any compensation for their loss – I’ll come back to this.

I think of Datagrid whose land provides a great location to invest in a data centre and subsea cable network expansion. This would capitalise on the window of opportunity that is the spiking demand for data storage and faster connectivity in the age of artificial intelligence and the cloud. How ironic that this immense growth opportunity has been stalled by the imposition of a so-called ‘highly productive’ classification on their land, tying them up in consenting quicksand to protect a turnip crop.

I think of attempts to build a new McDonald’s, Starbucks, Burger King, or even a supermarket, where the RMA’s breadth has somehow gotten us to a point where vexatious objectors have been able to weaponise any number of irrelevant ‘effects’ to obstruct things they don’t like.

These are just some of the many examples up and down this country where people and organisations, big and small, are facing massive restrictions on the use of their property, too often for tenuous reasons enabled by the RMA that amount to little more than subjective ‘vibe’.

Whether it’s protecting dangerous trees, debating the vibe of landscapes and architecture, pontificating on how a property owner should best use their own land, or having to consider all manner of reckons – from the health profile of food to the competition ‘effects’ of a new business – the current council ‘value’ story is a hard one to tell.

The solution

The good news is that our commitment to replace the RMA with a system based on property rights will reduce the scope of resource management and liberate councils to focus on things that actually deliver value for ratepayers.

Last year, Cabinet agreed the principles and direction that would guide the replacement.

First things first: we must narrow the scope of the system to focus on material effects, and to promote the enjoyment of property rights. As is clear from the examples above, and countless others, the RMA tries to do too many things, and in doing so has become a vehicle to stifle growth. 

When the RMA was developed, the key downfall was integrating management of development and the environment into one purpose, which has treated development as a privilege. We’re going to change that by replacing the RMA with two Acts with distinct purposes – one to manage environmental effects arising from activities and another to enable urban development and infrastructure.

Councils will have clarity on what environmental effects and domains need managing, what needs to be considered when setting limits appropriate to their regions, and the tools available to manage resources within those limits. These tools should include innovative methods for things like water allocation and discharges, so scarce resources go to where they’re needed most, and supply can respond to demand.

What is not negotiable, though, is that human needs will be met. Frustrating development to resist growth doesn’t abate the need for it, nor does it change the reality that human existence necessarily has effects on the environment. If development cannot occur within an environmental limit in one place, then it must occur in another. But development must, and will, occur.

Through codifying into standards established and accepted ways of undertaking activities, the new system will liberate councils from the regulatory anxiety which demands consents and treats applications for common activities like road construction as a potential extermination event. When we’ve done most things in most places before, there’s no reason to start from scratch each time.

Spatial planning will be a core feature, with several important roles. It will separate incompatible land uses, provide protection for infrastructure, and identify natural hazards. The separation of incompatible land uses will be a key mechanism for managing potential neighbourhood effects like noise, odour, and the likes.

A stricter effects-based system with a no duplication rule means stripping out regulation and consenting for anything that has no material effects on the natural environment or another property owner, is covered by and complies with another law or national standard, or is subject to a private agreement among all affected parties.

A stricter effects-based system also means limiting who gets a say on what others do with their property if they are not directly affected. Gone will be the days of every Tom, Dick, and Harry sticking their noses into other people’s business at the other end of the country.

All of this will go some way to respecting property rights.

However, for potential situations where management of genuine effects presents residual friction with property rights, we must ask ourselves through this process “who benefits from such a constraint?” and, therefore, “who should bear the cost?”

For example, coming back to the case of the Zants’ issues under the current system – should they be the ones to pay the price of someone else’s decision that the landscape their property sits on is ‘outstanding’ to look at? What incentives does this this create for making sound decisions about what is outstanding when it is costless to the decision maker?

Through all this change to unshackle people from the burdensome approach of up-front consenting, Cabinet has also recognised a corresponding need for a strong compliance monitoring and enforcement regime, ensuring accountability among system participants so this replacement system delivers for both development and the environment.

Conclusion

This is just a sample of some of the key elements to be determined as we shore up the design of the new system, and no doubt there will be interest across other areas – from the role of a planning tribunal type function, to the shift to one plan per region, and beyond.

With the Resource Management Expert Advisory Group now having taken Cabinet’s direction and developed a draft blueprint for RMA replacement, there will be more to share in due course.

One thing that is clear, though, is that engagement of key system participants is important.

Local government is a critical system participant, so I encourage you to take the opportunity to feed into this reform, 

Because liberalising resource management is a critical step in helping councils sharpen their value stories and unlocking the innovation and economic growth we so desperately need.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Two new members have been appointed to the board of Eden Park Trust, Sport and Recreation Minister Mark Mitchell says.

“Marama Royal MNZM (Ngāti Whātua) and Hon Simon Bridges (Ngāti Maniapoto) will be bringing their extensive governance experience and passion for the Auckland region to support the leadership of New Zealand’s largest stadium.

“I am confident that these appointments will add fresh perspectives and expertise to help lead Eden Park through the current conversations about the park’s future.

“Marama Royal MNZM is Chair of the Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei Trust Board and has extensive governance experience. She is an esteemed and experienced iwi leader who will bring significant governance experience, strong networks and deep understanding of the whenua to the role. 

“Hon Simon Bridges is well known for his political experience where he served in several Cabinet positions, and more recently for his role as CEO of Auckland Business Chamber. His experience in both political and commercial settings offer unique perspective, skillset, and networks that would enable the board to thrive.

“I have also reappointed Kereyn Smith CNZM and Bill Birnie CNZM as members of the board to continue their steadfast commitment to the future of Eden Park. 

“These appointments and reappointments will ensure strong leadership and a commitment to the future success of New Zealand’s iconic stadium,” says Mr Mitchell.

“I also acknowledge outgoing members, Victoria Toon and Renata Blair, whose terms ended in February.  They have been influential in supporting relationships with residents, iwi and commercial entities, and I thank them for their services to the board over the years.”

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

A pilot programme that will help financial technology (fintech) firms shake up competition in the financial and banking sectors is now underway, says Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Scott Simpson.

“Our Government is focused on improving competition in the areas that matter most to Kiwis. The financial and banking sectors are among the most crucial to our everyday lives and our economic growth – however, they are often criticised as being among the most regulated and, some say, least competitive,” says Mr Simpson.

“We have heard these concerns from the industry and have taken them seriously. I am pleased that the Financial Markets Authority has now announced the six firms that will take part in its pilot ‘regulatory sandbox’ programme, which was announced late last year.

“The sandbox is a testing ground where fintechs can experiment with new products and services in a controlled environment, ensuring they comply with regulations, before doing a full commercial launch.

“The benefits of this programme reach all corners of our economy. For consumers, it opens the door wide for new and innovative solutions that will challenge traditional banks and boost competition, providing more choices about how people manage their money, investments, and day-to-day transactions.

“For fintechs, it means having the freedom and guidance to develop new products and services that will not only benefit customers but also help them supercharge New Zealand’s economic growth. I expect the sandbox will enable firms to save time, reduce costs, and bring innovative products to market sooner.

“Fintechs are exactly the kind of high-value companies that we want to see thrive in New Zealand, but regulatory barriers have prevented them from competing on a level playing field. That’s why our Government is identifying and removing these barriers to support a thriving, scalable fintech industry in New Zealand.

“Our Government also recognises the potential of fintechs to disrupt New Zealand’s financial services sector, increasing competition and choice for Kiwis. With open banking now on track to be operational in New Zealand by the end of the year, this is another action we are taking to help further unlock that potential.

“I look forward to seeing how the firms make use of the sandbox. I encourage them to be bold and push the boundaries as they develop innovative solutions that will bring more choice and better services to consumers.”

Notes to editors:

The firms taking part in the pilot are:

For further details on the regulatory sandbox and the firms participating in the pilot, please visit: https://www.fma.govt.nz/business/focus-areas/innovation/.

It is anticipated the firms will operate within the terms of the sandbox for a period of between 12 and 24 months. Following the pilot, the Financial Markets Authority will make a decision on whether to make the programme permanent.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

The Regional Infrastructure Fund will invest up to $2 million to investigate building additional electricity transmission and distribution capacity in Northland, which could also have benefits further afield, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says.

“New Zealand needs significantly more electricity generation as the economy grows and demand for power increases. Northland is rich in natural renewable resources, such as wind and solar which are suitable for generating renewable energy,” Mr Jones says.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) will use up to $2m from the Regional Infrastructure Fund to investigate the feasibility of upgrading Northland’s electricity infrastructure to act as an ‘energy bridge’ between Northland and Auckland.

MBIE will also carry out an economic analysis of the potential benefits in conjunction with local stakeholders.

“This project has the potential to unlock $1 billion of private investment in new renewable energy. If this is feasible, Northland could become a significant electricity generator and supplier of power which might have flow-on benefits for Auckland and the rest of the country,” Mr Jones says.

“This investment could increase electricity self-sufficiency in the region and improve the power generation capacity and resilience of the Northland network which will benefit local people. It could also reduce power prices for Auckland and nationally if wholesale prices can be brought down.

“More detailed work needs to be done into the feasibility of expanding Northland’s power generation before further government funding can be considered but if the outcome is positive, the payoff could be massive.

“This is a long-term project and there is a lot of water to pass under the bridge yet, but if it goes ahead some new power generation could come online as components are completed, with full commissioning by 2029,” Mr Jones says.

The project aligns with the Coalition Government’s goals of building infrastructure and doubling renewable energy generation for New Zealand by 2035 to reduce emissions and enable economic growth.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Minister of Transport Chris Bishop has confirmed the Manawatū Tararua Highway will be opened to traffic from June 2025, restoring an important connection for communities and businesses on both sides of the Tararua Ranges.

“The new highway between Ashhurst and Woodville will replace State Highway 3 through the Manawatū Gorge, which was permanently closed in April 2017 due to landslides,” says Mr Bishop.

“Travel times will be greatly improved for both light and heavy vehicles using the new road. General traffic will take between 10 – 12 minutes to drive the road, which is a significant improvement on the current 20 – 25 minute detour route in place. The new road will be safer and more resilient than the road it’s replacing.

“The road will support productivity for businesses by improving travel times for freight and lowering vehicle operating costs. This corridor is an important freight link between Hawke’s Bay-Wairarapa and the Manawatu-Whanganui regions. Having an efficient, four-lane highway, divided by a median barrier through this transport corridor will boost economic growth for this part of the country and the rest of the North Island.”

“This highway will reconnect the communities severely affected by the closure of the old road. Woodville and Ashhurst have been impacted by the closure, and I would like to acknowledge their patience and their support for the project since its inception.

“The construction teams still have some work to do before the road can open. This includes laying the final stages of asphalt, installing barriers, line marking and, crucially, connecting the new road to the surrounding roading network. The expected cost to complete the project now stands at $824.1 million.

“I’m looking forward to the road being open and I know local communities are too.”

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Taupō Hospital has become the first hospital in the North Island to receive accreditation to deliver Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine (ACRRM) training, Health Minister Simeon Brown and Associate Health Minister Matt Doocey have announced.

“The Government is committed to growing and strengthening our health workforce, and a strong rural workforce is a key part of that,” Mr Brown says.

“In rural settings where access to specialist health services can be limited, generalist doctors – who can work flexibly across multiple disciplines and service areas – play a vital role.

“This accreditation is a significant step towards building a stronger rural health workforce in Taupō. It will help increase the number of doctors trained with the broad skills needed to support the surrounding rural communities.

“Rural generalists can sustainably manage a broad range of patient needs and work within clinical networks to ensure patients get access to specialist teams when required.

“The ACRRM programme will enable registrars to train to work in Taupō Hospital while also developing advanced skills in fields such as obstetrics, anaesthetics, mental health, or endoscopy.

Mr Doocey says being an accredited ACRRM training location means Taupō can attract both New Zealand and Australian registrars and graduates and provides an opportunity for some New Zealand doctors working overseas to return home during their training.

“One of the five priorities of the National Rural Health Strategy is to create a valued and flexible rural health workforce, and training young doctors as rural generalists directly supports this goal,” Mr Doocey says.

“Taupō Hospital’s new accreditation complements the existing pathway for New Zealand doctors through the New Zealand Rural Hospital Medicine Training Programme.

“All New Zealanders deserve timely access to quality healthcare, and the Government is committed to improving health outcomes, particularly for the one in five Kiwis living in rural areas.

“To improve access and rural health outcomes, we must invest in growing and supporting the rural health workforce. Taupō Hospital’s accreditation is an important step towards that.”