NZ Engine

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

[Comments following the bilateral meeting with United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio; United States State Department, Washington D.C.]

* We’re very pleased with our meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio this afternoon.

* We came here to listen to the new Administration and to be clear about what is important to New Zealand. Today, we enjoyed substantive and productive discussions with Secretary Rubio across a broad range of issues.

* There’s a lot happening in the Indo-Pacific, and indeed our world. It’s a seriously valuable time to be here in Washington DC.

* Secretary Rubio has had a long career in foreign policy and it was helpful to re-connect with him and hear his insights into what is going on.

* This has been a very successful visit to Washington DC, meeting with a wide range of representatives of the Trump Administration.

* We agreed that we should continue to work together for a free, open and prosperous Indo-Pacific. And we talked about all the areas where New Zealand and the United States have interests in common. These include the prosperity and stability of the Pacific Islands, space and technology, as well as Antarctica where our cooperation has been deep and longstanding.

* This visit has provided the starting point for considering what constructive cooperation between New Zealand and the United States might look like in the months and years ahead.

* This is just the first step. We will now go back to New Zealand to discuss with Cabinet colleagues what we have learned here in Washington DC.

* With Secretary Rubio, we have agreed to remain in close contact in the months ahead. We will no doubt see each other again later this year, whether at a regional meeting or back here in DC.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Good morning, everyone.

I’m Todd McCay, Minster of Agriculture, Forestry, Trade, the first minister for Investment – or Foreign Direct Investment, as well as associate minister for Foreign Affairs — responsible with the Deputy PM for: Latin America, Gulf States, Northen Asia, and Africa.

New Zealand is an ambitious, innovative country. We’re globally connected, rich with opportunity, and open for business. If you’re looking for a place to invest, to build, or to grow—New Zealand is the place to be.

Our location in the Asia-Pacific, a stable political environment, a highly skilled workforce, and significant network of trade and investment agreements makes us an obvious choice for global businesses.

As Trade and Investment Minister, I often talk to investors who see the immense potential New Zealand offers. They tell me they want to do more here, and my message to them, and to you, is clear: we will back you.

If you want to grow, to expand, or to innovate in New Zealand, we will help make it happen.

The Government, and New Zealanders, know that Foreign Direct Investment is crucial to grow the economy. It fuels innovation, creates jobs, and ensures we can compete on the world stage. That’s why we’re making it easier than ever for investors like you to seize the opportunities that we have to offer.

We have important trade architecture through trade and investment agreements with most parts of the world, 20 of them in fact, from the UK and EU to the CPTPP including Japan, countries from North America, South America, South East Asia, Australia, China, Singapore and of course two newly concluded last year in record time, the UAE and GCC including Saudi Arabia.

We have a network of investment treaties and agreements with more than 40 countries – 84% of New Zealand’s FDI is covered by these agreements worth $133 billion. And we have more than 40 double tax agreements and we respect tax rules and law.

Today, I am pleased to announce that we will roll out the welcome mat, by establishing a new agency – Invest New Zealand — a dedicated, standalone group focused solely on attracting foreign investment, whose job it is to make it easier for you. I also want to introduce you to our key growth sectors, where we see huge potential, and tell you about the changes we’re making to ensure New Zealand is a top-tier destination for your investment.

Invest NZ has a bold new vision

We’re taking investment attraction to the next level.

To scale up our efforts, we will stand up Invest New Zealandby 1 July this year.

The world has responded positively to our announcement that we are open to investment — and we don’t want them to have to wait for our service.

Invest NZ will be a one-stop-shop, a problem solver, cutting through bureaucracy and proactively ensuring that investment propositions get through the system quickly. Its job will be to work with you get the right decisions from central and local government smoothly, get your consent or permission effortlessly. We want to derisk your decision to invest in our country.

Through Invest NZ, we will:

• Target high-impact investments in key sectors like technology, agritech, renewable energy, fintech, finances, manufacturing, advanced manufacturing and of course the production and processing of high-quality, safe food.
• Remove unnecessary barriers so investing here is easy, efficient, and predictable.
• Proactively engage with global investors and multinationals, showcasing the unique advantages of doing business in New Zealand.
• Support high-growth Kiwi businesses to become investment-ready, so they can scale up and expand internationally.

While Invest NZ won’t lead on infrastructure investment – that remains with National Infrastructure Funding and Financing Limited – it will connect global investors with the right agencies to get deals done. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to do business here.

Invest NZ is a tool available to investors get deals through the system quickly and efficiently, and to give you the certainty that the Government stands with you.

By leveraging our strengths: our talent, innovative excellence, and commitment to high-quality production – Invest NZ will unlock tens of billions of dollars in global investment and position New Zealand as one of the most attractive places to invest in the Asia-Pacific.

We have set an ambition target to double exports by value within ten years, Invest NZ will ensure New Zealand attracts the capital needed to help achieve this. We will also compare FDI stock as a percentage of GDP against other nations to better measure our success in attracting investment.

If you want to do more in New Zealand, we back you and Invest NZ will help make it happen.

Investing in High-Growth Sectors

There’s no shortage of world-class investment opportunities in New Zealand – you heard about a few of them yesterday from the Prime Minister and my colleagues. Across multiple industries, businesses are scaling, innovating, and looking for global partners to help them grow. We believe some of the biggest untapped opportunities lie in the following sectors:

Fintech & Finance

New Zealand’s fintech sector is booming.

• $2.6 billion in revenue in 2023, with 24% compound annual growth since 2018.
• Now New Zealand’s largest tech sector, establishing a critical mass of larger export firms like Xero.
• Fintech firms with $5m+ in revenue have tripled in a decade.
• The sector employs 4,200 people in New Zealand, with another 4,650 offshore.
• The Government is introducing open banking legislation to drive competition and innovation in financial services, creating new opportunities for investment. There are opportunities for more banks in New Zealand.

Renewable Energy

New Zealand is leading the global shift to net-zero carbon.

• 88% of our electricity is generated from renewables—but just 30% of our industry and transport runs on clean energy, meaning massive untapped potential.
• Strong government backing and natural resources make this a prime sector for investment.
• Opportunities exist in green hydrogen, battery storage, renewable energy exports, data storageand AI processing.

Advanced Transportation

New Zealand is a testbed for cutting-edge transport technology.

• Ranked third in the world for rocket launches.
• A forward-thinking regulatory environment allows innovation to scale fast.
• Investors can plug into a fast-growing ecosystem spanning aerospace, EVs, and autonomous transport.

Aquaculture

Aquaculture is New Zealand’s fastest-growing food production sector.

• The global market is expanding at 5.4% compound annual growth rate.
• New Zealand has one of the largest exclusive economic zones in the world (4.1 million sq km).
• The industry is targeting $3 billion in annual value by 2035.

Cleantech

New Zealand is a global leader in sustainable innovation.

• The cleantech market is projected to hit $1 trillion by 2030.
• We have a highly skilled tech workforce and strong R&D capability.
• A growing pipeline of scalable cleantech ventures needs capital to accelerate growth.

Minerals & Resources

New Zealand’s mineral sector is primed for growth.

• The sector aims to double exports to $3 billion and grow jobs from 5,290 to 7,000+ by 2035.
• Expansion of gold, coking coal, mineral sands, critical minerals and rare earth minerals will drive this growth.
• New Fast Track Approvals legislation is clearing the path for investment.

We Back You

There are world-leading businesses across all these sectors ready for investment. Many of them need not just capital, but global expertise, networks, and partners who can help them scale.

So, my message to you is clear: If you’re ready to invest, we’re ready to help. We can drive growth together and turn opportunity into profit.

I encourage you to get in touch with the team at Invest New Zealand if you’re interested in learning more about opportunities in the sectors included in the following showcase or in any other sectors.

Conclusion

It is now a privilege to hand over to my colleagues who will take you through the specific sector opportunities I’ve highlighted:

• Minister Jones: recourses and aquiculture
• Minister Collins: Advanced Transportation
• Minister Watts: renewable and clean energy

It has been a pleasure speaking with you. I look forward to seeing many of you take the next step and grow sectors in New Zealand.

As New Zealand’s newly appointed, and first Minister responsible for Foreign Direct Investment, I want to leave you all with one clear message – we are open for business, and we will be saying yes to investment.

Thank you.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone.

It’s a pleasure to be here today, to feel your energy and the sense of possibility and opportunity in this room. Whether you’ve travelled from the other side of the world, or took on Auckland traffic to be here, your presence matters.

I’m here today as a proud New Zealander, one of a team of Government Ministers determined to make much more of the enormous potential of this incredible country. To:

• improve the quality of peoples’ lives
• deliver better public services and
• create great jobs for our kids;

That last point is especially important for me, on a personal level: I’m a mother of four children aged 9, 12, 13 and 15. In this world of abundant choices for them, in terms of where they take their skills, where they take their lives, I want them – and all young Kiwis – to see this as a country of aspiration, and a place they should choose to make their home. I entered politics with a very strong conviction that strong leadership and good policy are needed to make this a place that the world’s talent will continue to make their home.

I serve our Prime Minister as both our Finance Minister and our Minister for Economic Growth.

As Finance Minister, I take responsibility for managing our Government’s books. So yes, I am the bean-counter, and I am always on a perpetual mission to drive more value from the spending we do and the investments we make. I am the Ministerial colleague who takes pride in scrutinising the dollars, in reading through the business cases, and having the courage to say ‘no’ when proposals don’t stack up, and in saying ‘yes’ to innovations and partnerships that enhance the financial discipline and reliable delivery of vital public infrastructure.

I also have the privilege of being our Minister for Economic Growth, helping lead our Government’s growth agenda. Growth is central to our mission and purpose: not only is it our most powerful tool for strengthening our public finances and flattering those books of mine, it’s also the means by which we will create better choices, higher living standards and more financial security for our people.

Why should you invest in New Zealand?

New Zealand is incredibly well positioned for growth. We are an undervalued stock. We have a stable democracy, with strong institutions and enduring respect for the rule of law, that has survived over successive changes of government. We have safe borders, extraordinary natural resources, a temperate climate, strong trading relationships, an open, innovative culture – and you’ll see that open culture on display these next two days, and expect to have some candid and frank conversations – that’s how we roll. We have talented people.

Let me paint that picture for you.

Our stable democracy

We ranked first on the World Bank’s ease of doing business index the last time the bank issued the index in 2019.

We rank second on the Economist Group’s Democracy Index and according to Transparency International we are the fourth least corrupt country in the world. This is a good, reliable place to do business.

We have safe borders, good international relations and extensive trading networks.

Of course, it is somewhat simpler to have safe borders when you are surrounded by ocean, as we are. Our nearest big neighbour is 1500km away. We have worked hard, over many decades, to establish diplomatic relations with a large number of countries in all regions of the world.

In 2024 we exported more than $101 billion worth of goods and services.

Our largest export markets are China, the US and Australia, but we export to 230 nations in total.

Across successive governments, we have weaved a constellation of close trading and economic relationships that give our exporters access to a broad range of markets on competitive terms.

Our main good exports are dairy products, tourism, meat, wool and forestry, but our exports extend to world-beating digital services, advanced manufacturing and exciting creative industries.

We have strong institutional settings

It should give you confidence that while elections may change things, many things will remain.

Over successive decades and Governments, we have worked hard to put in place best-practice institutional frameworks: an independent central bank with a remit for low and stable inflation – the first inflation-targeting regime in the world – and a floating exchange rate.

Our legal system, based on the British model, upholds the rule of law with an independent judiciary.

Our government accounts are prepared according to high international standards and are released in a timely fashion.

Stability is our middle name.

We have sound government accounts

Our Public Finance Act requires the government of the day to be transparent about both its short- and long-term fiscal objectives and to maintain prudent debt levels and report against these measures.

We have relatively low levels of government debt compared to other countries, with the IMF’s most recent Fiscal Monitor ranking us having relatively the 26^th lowest level of public debt when compared to the 33 advanced countries they assess.

The Government is working hard to put net core Crown debt on a downward trajectory, balancing the need to ensure are resilient to and future economic shocks that may come our way while making room for the prudent investments needed to drive future productivity.

Labour market flexibility

We have a flexible labour market.

OECD comparisons rank us highly in terms of flexibility for hiring temporary workers, and for settings that allow high labour flows between jobs and industries.

Between 2000 and 2017 about one fifth of New Zealand workers switched jobs each year and about half of those job switches involved a change of industry.

This flexibility helps labour productivity by making it easier for workers to move from less productive to more productive firms, or to jobs that better match their skills.

We are well poised to adapt our workforce to the new industries and new challenges that are right upon us as a world, and that will continue to arise in the coming decades.

Similarly, our rates of long-term unemployment are low, and while we did not escape the post-Covid downturn in economic activity experienced throughout the world, our unemployment levels remain below historic averages.

We have flexible and responsive regulatory systems. We are small, and we are nimble. Our small size and our can-do attitude has translated to has translated to an ability to respond quickly to emerging opportunities.

A key example is that of space company Rocket Lab, which the Prime Minister referred to. It announced in late 2014, through its leader Peter Beck, that it wanted to launch rockets from a remote peninsula on the East Coast of the North Island.

Less than a year later, seized by that possibility and opportunity, the Government agreed to a new regulatory regime – a world-leading regulatory regime – to enable those rockets to launch.

That regime came into law in 2017 with the first launch by Rocket Lab taking place that same year.

We have done it before, and we are prepared to do it for emerging industries again.

Unlike some countries in the world, beset by large size and complexity, we have a parliament that allows these things to happen quickly.

We also have some of the best, most efficient and most sustainable farmers in the world, who take pride in making the most of our abundant natural resources.

We have a long history of not subsidising our farmers but instead having them face competitively into world markets.

Fonterra is the sixth largest global dairy producer and our sheep and beef farmers are internationally renowned. We feed tens of millions of people around the world, delivering products that meet exacting safety standards.

New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone is over 14 million square kilometres, the ninth largest in the world, and aquaculture is New Zealand’s fastest-growing food production sector.

We have abundant renewable energy. Eighty-eight per cent of our electricity comes from hydro, geothermal, wind, solar and other sources of renewable energy. We have no lack of land or desire or capacity for far far more renewable energy.

We are blessed with minerals and resources, and have huge capacity to make more of these. Legislative changes are paving the way for increased investment in the mining of gold, coking coal, mineral sands and critical minerals.

We have an entrepreneurial and innovative DNA

We pride ourselves – as the Prime Minister said – on what we call our number eight wire mentality – our ability to innovate.

New Zealand is, by and large, a country of small businesses, led by innovative people with a can-do attitude, some of whom make it very big.

Examples include cloud-based accounting software company Xero, Wētā Digital famous for its groundbreaking visual effects and Fisher&Paykel Healthcare, globally recognised for its work providing innovative healthcare solutions for more than 50 years.

We have a proud and accomplished indigenous population, with our Māori economy becoming an increasingly significant player in the New Zealand economy and contributing hugely to New Zealand’s unique national identity.

Over the five years to 2023 the Māori asset base increased from $69 billion to $126 billion. That was a faster rate of asset growth than for the economy as a whole – testament to the success iwi and Māori entities are having in making smart and long-term investment choices, underpinned by strong commercial discipline.

Over the same period the Māori economic contribution to gross domestic product increased from $17 billion to $32 billion. Mark my words, that growth is set to continue.

Changing attitudes

And we’ve been trading successfully internationally since the first contact between Europeans and Māori in the latter part of the 18th century.

We have some strong traditions. But I also think that New Zealand is at a moment of change. Some of that change isn’t things you can see, but it is a change in attitude.

Where once New Zealanders primarily were concerned about preserving what we already had, and our way of life as it has been, increasingly, New Zealanders have growing recognition of the need to embrace change if we want to provide opportunities for our children and fund high quality health, education and other public services.

That desire to change, that sense of ambition and possibility, is reflected in the Government’s reform agenda.

Let me give you some examples.

1.Overseas investment

We recognize that the world doesn’t owe us a living and that every country in the world must compete for its share of the world’s wealth.

NZ’s foreign direct investment levels currently sits at around 40% of GDP compared to the OECD average of 53% as at 2023. There is untapped potential for more investment in this economy.

We are reforming our overseas investment settings to ensure more of the world’s capital can flow here and is encouraged to flow here. We are determined not to allow red tape or uncertain settings to disrupt investment and growth.

The impulse driving this reform is strong.

Over the past 10 years, New Zealand’s labour productivity growth has only averaged about 0.3 per cent a year.

Low capital intensity has been identified as one of the major causes of that low productivity.

In order to increase our productivity, we need more capital investment. And David Seymour has been changing the rules to ensure we can.

Therefore, we’re changing the rules to:

• Better reflect the benefits investment can provide to New Zealand’s economy
• make consenting decisions in just 15 days for all investments aside from residential land, farmland and fishing quota
• strengthen the Government’s ability to intervene on the rare occasions that a transaction is not in the national interest; and

Our goal is to increase New Zealand’s attractiveness as a destination for your investment.

2. Fast-track consenting

We’re acutely aware of the challenges and frustrations for the need for effective, timely and affordable approval processes for new projects.

We’re reforming our resource consenting rules, and fast-tracking the consenting process for projects of national and regional importance.

They include:

• renewable energy projects
• aquaculture businesses
  • mining projects; and
  • housing developments

3. Gearing up for a more stable and predictable infrastructure pipeline with more Public Private Partnerships

Our democracy is robust, and the contest of ideas in our Parliament is very lively, but we have found common ground, across parties, on the need for a more bipartisan approach to infrastructure planning and delivery. The presence of three opposition Parliamentarians here today is testament to that shared aspiration, and that sense of what is good for New Zealand over the long term.

The simply reality is that overcoming New Zealand’s infrastructure deficit demands an approach that can look through elections and any change of Government.

We do intend to be here for many, many years to come – but in the event that there is a change, we recognise the benefits that come from sequencing a clear pipeline of upcoming investments and have made institutional reforms to support this. Across all areas of public infrastructure we are working to logically identify, prioritise, and sequence the investments needed over the coming decade and beyond. You will hear a lot more detail about these plans from our Ministers over the course of this summit.

We are excited, also, by the opportunity for adoption of modern funding, financing and partnership approaches for the delivery of these public infrastructure projects.

The New Zealand Government has done eight public private partnerships so far. They include schools, roads and corrections facilities. We have learned from these, and we want to do more.

Of course, we’ll only do PPPs when they are in New Zealand’s best interests.

When negotiating PPPs our focus is on the enhanced delivery of public services not just cost.

We are interested in incentivising and allowing innovation, locating risk with those best-placed to address it, focusing decision-makers on whole-of-life outcomes and unlocking new funding sources.

We recognise that the people in this room bring not only capital but also skill, and experience that will allow us to deliver better infrastructure faster.

The outlook

Our Government has a clear mandate to drive growth-enhancing reforms across a broad range of public policy.

As I stand here today, I can be clear with you that there is a Government that wants to make this an even better place to do business. Whether it’s:

• Changing work visa to make it easier for employers to get the workers they need and to better facilitate foreign direct investment
• Reviewing competition rules with a view to increasing competition, we see huge possibility for new entrants in our grocery, and banking sectors, among others and we’re ensuring that our regulatory frameworks encourage innovation and disruption.
• Launching a minerals strategy
• We have also been working on a number of reforms across government to increase our education standards to ensure access to a skilled workforce,
• We have been reorienting the science and innovation system to focus more on commercialisation, and to make the most of new gene technologies.

Across all of these reforms, whether it is regional growth initiatives, whether it is macroeconomic reform, whether it is microeconomic reform, our focus is on making the most of what we have.

Conclusion

Like a lot of countries, New Zealand has been through a challenging few years.

But what I would put to you as I stand here today is that if I could choose to be any country in this particular moment in time, this moment of some uncertainty, of rapid change and of more concerns about security than I have seen in my generation, in a world in which people are worried about security – I would choose New Zealand.

In a world in which people are worried about food supply and the effect of extreme climatic events, I would choose New Zealand.

We have safe, secure borders, a temperate climate. We have abundant resources, robust institutions, strong cultural foundations and the best people. Our best years are ahead of us, and we are grateful to you for coming with us on this journey.

There are huge opportunities for you to generate value. There are huge opportunities for us to grow together. Let’s make New Zealand an even better place.

Thank you.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Good morning,

I would like to join the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance in extending a warm welcome to you all.

And I’d like to say a big thank you for being here.

This Summit is about showing you that New Zealand is open for business, we are going for growth, and we are a safe and strong country to invest in.

Over the next two days, we will be showcasing our infrastructure pipeline, our exciting growth sectors, and the Māori economy.

I have the great privilege of being the Minister for Infrastructure alongside a few other roles.

And this morning, I want to talk to you about the New Zealand Government’s vision for infrastructure.

We were elected to be a government of infrastructure.

We know that we have a big infrastructure deficit and addressing it is critical to boosting growth and improving our productivity.

Over the past 15 months, we have been laying the groundwork to create a highly performing infrastructure sector.

We’ve laid out ambitious plans to remove red tape, improve funding and financing, and to make sure the government is a much better client.

Role of private capital

We are also determined to attract more private capital, capacity, and capability into our infrastructure system.

Because we can’t unlock our potential without the private sector.

Private construction firms build our infrastructure. This is well understood by the public.

What is less visible is the important role private capital plays in public infrastructure.

Under the right contractual and regulatory frameworks, private capital is hugely beneficial for our system and, therefore, beneficial for New Zealanders.

Private capital in public infrastructure can:

• introduce competitive tension,
• encourage efficiency, innovation, and disciplined project management,
• boost local capability and capacity,
• incentivise on-time, on-budget delivery,
• incentivise good asset maintenance and consistent level of service, and
• lift accountability.

We only have to look at the Ultrafast Broadband rollout – where New Zealand is among the top countries in the world for fibre coverage – and the Puhoi to Warkworth State Highway to know that private capital can deliver great outcomes for Kiwis.

To achieve more of these outcomes more often, our objective is to broaden the funding base for projects and utilise private capital, where efficient.

This, along with other changes to the infrastructure system, will help get New Zealand ahead so that we can grow our economy, create jobs and opportunities, and raise our standard of living.

Infrastructure is a key enabler for growth and lifting our standard of living

New Zealand has incredible potential, and I believe that we can be so much wealthier and more productive than we are today.

Infrastructure is critical for the wellbeing of people and the prosperity of nations.

Infrastructure also represents some of our longest-lived assets. In fact, some bridges in our highway network have been around since the 1800s.

New Zealand has more than 2,500 public schools, 40 public hospitals, and more than 96,000 kilometres of road.

In 2022, our infrastructure assets, excluding land, were worth about $287 billion.

We can thank past generations for their sustained investment in infrastructure.

We want our grandchildren, and their grandchildren to thank us too. That’s why delivering infrastructure for the future is a key part of this Government’s plan.

New Zealand has a proud history of building for the future

Before I outline the changes we are making to New Zealand’s infrastructure system, I want to share two stories from our past.

Our geography, small size, and isolation have long presented challenges, but we have always been up for the task of finding innovative and ambitious ways to deliver the infrastructure our country needs.

High Voltage Direct Current Cable – Cook Strait Cable

Let me start with the Cook Strait Cable.

In the 1960s, New Zealand had a problem. The need for electricity in the North Island was growing, but most of the generation opportunities were in the South Island.

We needed a cable to connect the two.

Instead of letting something as small as the Cook Strait stop us, we used world leading engineering and built a High Voltage Direct Current, or HVDC link between Benmore, and Lower Hutt – the city I am proud to represent as a Member of Parliament.

That’s 610 kilometres of cable.

When it was built in 1965, our HVDC submarine cable was the world’s largest and longest of its kind.

This project was ahead of its time and allowed New Zealand to:

• better optimise the national grid,
• provide security of electricity supply, and
• make early use of renewable energy – something we are very lucky to have an abundance of here.

Transpower, New Zealand’s National Grid owner and System Operator, is planning to replace the Cook Strait Cables at the end of the decade and has secured global cable supplier Prysmian to do this.

For 60 years now the Cable has helped power New Zealand, and it remains a true example of Kiwi ingenuity and ambition.

Auckland Harbour Bridge

The second story I would like to share is about the Auckland Harbour Bridge.

66 years ago, the North Shore – about 10 kilometres north from where we are sitting right now – was a sleepy area with a population of around 50,000 and was only accessible from Auckland via a 50-kilometre drive, or by ferry.

This all changed with the construction of the Auckland Harbour Bridge, which began in 1955.

Hundreds of workers were needed, including many brought over from England.

In 1959 the Bridge opened, with toll booths to help recoup the cost.

Demand was massive and population on the North Shore boomed. It is now home to over 240,000 people.

Only a decade after the bridge was built, we added huge steel extensions, or clip-ons, onto the wide concrete piers.

The clip-ons were built in Japan, shipped to New Zealand, and attached to the bridge – doubling the number of lanes from four to eight, which remain in use today.

Even though this bridge was built 66 years ago, there are still lessons we can learn from it:

• first, people who benefit from infrastructure should help pay the cost of it,
• second, investment in infrastructure can unlock significant growth, and
• third, it’s wise to build infrastructure that is future-proofed and that can adapt to change.

These two stories remind me that New Zealand has built some world-leading, innovative, and growth-enabling infrastructure.

We have built tunnels through mountains, cables across the sea, and dams that power hundreds of thousands of homes.

And we will build on this legacy.

Future challenges

But, today, New Zealand, like many other countries, faces new challenges like a growing and aging population, congestion, more frequent hazard and extreme weather events, a backlog of asset maintenance, and project cost blow-outs.

By 2050, If we keep doing things how we are now, New Zealand is expected to have an infrastructure deficit of around $210b.

We cannot tackle these challenges by continuing the status quo – so, once again, New Zealand has to innovate.

And we are still up for the job.

This Government is not here to make tweaks around the edges. We are ambitious, and we are here to fundamentally shift the way we plan, select, fund and finance, build, and look after our infrastructure.

That’s why we are here with you today – to showcase our more enabling system, and to learn from and partner with you to deliver the infrastructure New Zealand needs.

My priorities as Minister for Infrastructure

Last year, I mapped out what I want from the infrastructure system.

I want the private sector to invest here, because they are confident in the pipeline and are enabled to get on with it by an efficient and fair consenting system.

And I want the public to enjoy infrastructure that is safe, reliable, accessible, and good value for money.

To achieve this, I’m focused on six priorities as Infrastructure Minister:

1. Establishing National Infrastructure Funding and Financing Ltd – which we did in December last year.
2. Developing a 30-year National Infrastructure Plan.
3. Improving infrastructure funding and financing.
4. Improving the consenting framework.
5. Improving education and health infrastructure.
6. Strengthening asset management.

These priorities are in response to what the coalition Government has heard from industry and infrastructure experts, both in New Zealand and overseas.

National Infrastructure Funding and Financing Ltd

Let’s start with National Infrastructure Funding and Financing Ltd, or NIFFCo.

On 1 December 2024, we established NIFFCo – a Crown-owned company. When you decide to join us in transforming New Zealand’s infrastructure, these are the people you will work with.

Allow me to introduce you to the Chair, Mark Binns, and the Chief Executive Officer, Graham Mitchell. They are here for the next two days and are keen to chat to you about what they do.

But, at a high-level, NIFFCo that has three functions:

• Its first function is to act as the Crown’s ‘shopfront’ to facilitate private sector investment and interest in infrastructure – this includes receiving and evaluating any Market Led Proposals, or Unsolicited Bids.
• NIFFCo’s second function is to partner with agencies, and in some cases, local government, on projects involving complex procurement, alternative funding mechanisms and private finance – including Public Private Partnerships (PPPs).
• Its third function is to administer central government infrastructure funds.

NIFFCo will help unlock access to more capital for infrastructure and give the private sector a clear and knowledgeable Government-side partner to work with on projects and transactions.

So, if you want to put forward a project, are looking for an opportunity to invest in New Zealand infrastructure or want to partner with Government – NIFFCo is open for business.

NIFFCo will also lift the government’s commercial capability and help us be a better client of infrastructure. It will do this by deploying expertise into agencies that are working on projects involving private finance and alternative funding mechanisms.

This includes, but is not limited to, projects involving traditional loans, equity investments, PPPs, developer levies, beneficiary levies, concessions, or other value uplift mechanisms.

When we established NIFFCo, we also clarified roles and responsibilities of other entities in the Crown’s Infrastructure system. So, broadly:

• The Infrastructure Commission is focused on long-term strategy and planning and is the Government’s independent advisor on infrastructure matters.
• Alongside its economic and fiscal responsibilities, in the infrastructure space, the Treasury is primary adviser to me as Minister for Infrastructure, and the steward of the government’s Investment Management System.
• Crown Infrastructure Delivery is mandated to deliver infrastructure on behalf of government agencies that don’t deliver infrastructure as their “Business as Usual”, or for agencies who would like to use centralised delivery capability.

On top of this, we are establishing, Invest New Zealand, who will work with NIFFCo and others to support our economic growth objectives. Invest New Zealand’s role will include attracting Foreign Direct Investment by marketing New Zealand overseas as an ideal location for business and innovation.

The Minister for Trade and Investment, Todd McClay will talk to you more about this tomorrow.

Developing a 30-year National Infrastructure Plan

Now, let’s move to my second priority, the 30-year National Infrastructure Plan.

The industry has asked for a long-term plan and pipeline so that they can invest in people and equipment.

We have heard them, it’s the right thing to do, and we are doing it.

The New Zealand Infrastructure Commission has been tasked with developing the independent plan by the end of 2025.

It will outline New Zealand’s infrastructure needs over the next 30 years, planned investments over the next 10 years, and recommendations on priority projects and reforms that can fill the gap between what we have and what need.

I want the Plan to mirror what happens in Australia, where the government leverages independent agencies to help them make the right long-term choices, while making sure there is strong capability within government to deliver.

There are four key components of the Plan.

The first is the Infrastructure Needs Assessment. The Needs Assessment will compare the long-run drivers of infrastructure demand – like population growth, aging assets, and natural hazards – against what we have now to identify our needs.

But we also have to be realistic about willingness to pay, because we can’t afford to do everything –

So, our plan is to select the package of projects that delivers the most benefits within our budget constraints.

The second component is strengthening the existing National Infrastructure Pipeline. The Pipeline will outline New Zealand’s infrastructure investments intentions over the next 10 years – in the public and private sector.

The Commission’s Pipeline already has 108 contributing organisations and includes over 7,500 projects, that combined, represents over $204 billion in value.

The third component is the Infrastructure Priorities Programme or the IPP, which is a structured, independent review of unfunded infrastructure projects and problems.

I’m really excited about the Priorities Programme. The IPP is modelled off the Infrastructure Priority List in Australia, which has helped them build political consensus on an enduring pipeline of major projects – and that is what I want for New Zealand as well.

Proposals that pass the test will be identified as priorities for New Zealand. This does not guarantee funding – but it does provide decision makers with a menu of credible proposals which could inform investment decisions.

The fourth component of the National Infrastructure Plan is priority reforms, which will outline non-investment interventions to improve the way we select, invest in, deliver, and look after infrastructure.

To summarise, this Government and future governments can use the National Infrastructure Plan to create a legacy that we can all be proud of.

All political parties have been offered a briefing, and I am confident that the Plan will be a solid step towards bipartisanship for infrastructure.

The Plan will be provided to me and published in December 2025, and the Government will then respond to it in 2026.

Improving infrastructure funding and financing

Now, let’s talk about my third priority, Improving infrastructure funding and financing.

Public infrastructure in New Zealand has historically been primarily funded by taxpayers or ratepayers.

But our heavy reliance on this blunt approach is not serving New Zealand well and has led to perverse outcomes including congestion, run-down assets, and the unresponsive provision of enabling infrastructure – contributing to unaffordable housing.

Infrastructure Funding and Financing Framework

In December last year, Treasury released its new Funding and Financing Framework.

This Framework provides guidance to agencies that they should, in the first instance, seek user or beneficiary pays to fund new infrastructure projects rather than defaulting to taxpayer money.

I expect proposals from sectors such as transport, water, energy, housing, and adaptation to demonstrate how user or beneficiary pays can contribute towards funding requirements.

Greater utilisation of user-pays will provide greater opportunities for the private sector to participate in Crown’s investments.

We want to use the government’s Balance Sheet more strategically and apply good commercial disciplines when deciding how to financially support a proposal – essentially providing “just enough support” to make proposals feasible.

This will mean we can deliver more projects, and channel more support to sectors where it is appropriate for the Crown to be the primary funder, like in health and education.

This Framework sits alongside wider work we have done to broaden and enhance funding and financing tools available to the Crown and councils.

New funding and financing tools

Just two weeks ago, I announced five changes to New Zealand’s funding and financing toolkit for infrastructure – I won’t cover all of these.

But the most relevant to people here, is that we are enabling ‘beneficiary and development levies’ through the Infrastructure Funding and Financing (IFF) Act to be used for major transport projects, such as those delivered by the New Zealand Transport Authority.

The IFF Act allows the creation of a Special Purpose Vehicle to raise finance for projects, where the cost is repaid through a levy charged to properties that benefit from a project over a period of about 20 to 30 years – a common model overseas.

This change has the potential to kickstart our embrace of Transit Oriented Development and will unlock a new funding stream for city-shaping projects.

Refreshed Public Private Partnership (PPP) Policy

To match our more commercial Funding and Financing Framework, and enhanced toolkit – we also knew we would need to modernise the Crown’s policies and contracting models, particularly in the PPP space.

So, after extensive engagement, in November last year, we released a Blueprint to the market outlining how the government will approach future PPPs.

I am very pleased that Labour Spokesperson for Finance, Hon Barbara Edmonds, who is here for the summit, wrote a foreword for the document.

There are several key elements in the refreshed Blueprint for PPPs:

• A more practical approach to risk transfer
• Guidance for agencies on bid cost recognition
• Enhancing the Interactive Tender Process
• Allowing reasonable price validation to occur during the procurement process
• Improving the process for managing claims and dispute resolution, and
• Increasing the capability and resourcing of the Crown so that we can be a better client.

Our approach is to be smart about private capital and use it in a way that unlocks investment and brings more maturity to the design, build, and maintenance of projects.

The new PPP Blueprint sits alongside new Strategic Leasing Guidance, and Guideline for Market Led Proposals.

Improving the consenting framework

Now, let’s move onto my fourth priority, improving the consenting framework.

Currently, our consenting landscape is an incredibly expensive handbrake on growth.

New Zealand’s resource management system governs how we interact with the environment. And for many years, it has been considered broken.

It achieves the worst of both worlds: it stifles development and fails to protect the environment. In many ways, our currently planning system is one of the root causes of our infrastructure deficit.

So finally, we are taking action.

We are undertaking a large reform programme: banking some quick wins now so that some significant projects can benefit from a more enabling system immediately, as well as replacing the entire system, which we plan to have introduced to Parliament mid-this year.

Our new system will be effects based and embrace standardisation, meaning fewer and faster consents.

The driving force behind these reforms is practical enablement of development. It is absolutely possible and necessary to build the infrastructure New Zealand needs and protect the environment at the same time.

To get things moving in the meantime, last year we introduced the Fast-track Approvals Act – which officially opened last month.

This regime allows infrastructure with significant regional and national benefits to access a quicker and easier pathway to get approval to build.

It is a one-stop-shop to access approvals, resource consents, and permits across nine different Acts, all in the one process.

We expect the process to take as quick as six months, depending on the complexity of the project.

It is a game changer for economic growth, and interest has been high.

The Government listed 149 projects in the Act itself, fast-tracking them in the fast-track process. More projects can be referred into the process too.

These 149 projects represent up to 55,000 new homes; 180 kilometres of new road, rail, and public transport routes; three gigawatts in additional generation capacity; and multiple mining and aquaculture projects.

Alongside our Resource Management Act, the Public Works Act will also be overhauled – and I will talk a bit more about this during my Transport speech tomorrow.

Development opportunities in New Zealand are abundant – we just need to unlock them.

Improving education and health infrastructure

I won’t go into too much detail of my, fifth priority, improving education and health infrastructure.

My colleagues – the Minister for Education, Erica Stanford, and the Minister for Health, Simeon Brown, will speak to you later today on the great work they are doing in their respective areas.

I will just quickly say that this government is moving towards:

• More standardised, repeatable designs,
• More modular and staged builds, and
• More strategic procurement – including by using a panel of contractors and partners for large programmes or packages of work.

Strengthening asset management

My sixth, and final priority is strengthening asset management.

Last year, I was shocked to hear that New Zealand is ranked fourth to last in the OECD for asset management, and dead last for the metric on Accountability and Professionalism.

One of the biggest challenges facing New Zealand’s infrastructure is the cost and resources we need to repair and replace assets that are wearing out.

The Infrastructure Commission tells me that 60 cents of every dollar spent on infrastructure should be going towards asset maintenance and renewals.

I’m determined to improve asset management.

So, to drive change, shortly, I’ll be exploring options around long term capital planning, asset management plans, mandatory reporting on standardised metrics, upskilling opportunities, accountability for poor performance, minimum standards, and stronger regulatory scrutiny and monitoring for government agencies.

Everything is on the table.

Conclusion

Let me conclude by thanking you again for being here.

New Zealand is open for business, we are going for growth, and we are worth investing in – particularly in infrastructure.

If you can’t tell, I am passionate about getting the underlying system settings right.

Our Government’s vision for infrastructure is simple: Enable the provision of infrastructure that will get New Zealand ahead so that we can grow our economy, create jobs and opportunities, increase productivity, and raise the standard of living for all Kiwis.

As I said at the start, New Zealand has built some world-leading, innovative, and growth-enabling infrastructure.

We can thank past generations for their sustained investment in infrastructure.

I want to build on this legacy, and I want our grandchildren, and their grandchildren to thank us too.

I look forward to talking to many of you over the next two days about achieving New Zealand’s infrastructure vision.

Thank you.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Good morning.

It’s a pleasure to speak with you about our country’s incredible potential. My comments focus on the Government’s work making it easier to do business by improving our regulatory settings.

You know New Zealand is small. From your flight here you know it’s distant. In fact, no Governments can control the size of their population or their geography, but they can control the quality of their public policy.

As Minister for Regulation and Associate Minister of Finance, my job is to ensure New Zealand has the regulatory settings to attract more investment and achieve higher productivity and living standards.

When I talk about regulatory settings, I mean the rules that government puts in place that restrict the use and exchange of private property. That is distinct from government’s other roles, which include spending to produce goods and services, and ownership of capital assets.

It’s this first area where I believe governments can make the most difference to encouraging investment, both domestically and from abroad. The foundation of a good regulatory system is secure property rights on a sound platform of the rule of law.

A recent edition of the Human Freedom Index rated New Zealand ninth out of 165 countries for its application of the rule of law. We were the highest ranked country outside of Western Europe, and ahead of Australia, the United States, Canada, and Great Britain on this score.

All Kiwis love beating Australia, at anything, such as when we got more medals per capita at last year’s Olympics in Paris. I may be unusual but I take particular pride in New Zealand being a freer society with sounder institutions than our neighbour, and indeed having some of the best institutions in the world.

We also have other attractions. A long history of stable democracy, being one of only seven countries to be democratic for the entirety of the twentieth century. We have a modern, open market economy. We have a highly skilled workforce, a stable political environment, and a government committed to making the necessary reforms to ensure long-term success.

We’re not kidding ourselves that that’s enough, however. As I said, sound property rights and a commitment to the rule of law, are only a foundation.

They get us to the starting line, but to win the race we must be better regulators, provide more certainty, and less red tape, making it easier to get a permit to use and develop your property so long as you are not doing harm to others or the natural environment.

That’s exactly the challenge our nation is now stepping up to meet, and it’s the commitment this Government is determined to deliver upon.

Overseas Investment Act changes

One critical area of regulation that I am responsible for is the consenting of overseas investments. Investment from overseas is fundamentally a win-win scenario. As Milton Friedman famously observed, the beauty of the free market lies in the fact that transactions only occur when both parties see mutual benefit. We agree. Investments into our country are, by definition, win-win.

We’re a growing nation and our businesses need capital to maintain our position as a first-world island paradise in the South Pacific. To do that, we are overhauling our regulation of overseas investment.

We’re creating a more efficient, growth-focused approach to attracting overseas investment with changes that will make it easier, quicker, and more transparent for foreign investors to invest in New Zealand businesses. I’ve seen first-hand the difference this makes to Kiwi businesses and Kiwi workers.

Not long ago, I visited two businesses in the same industry, on the same afternoon. Both companies had talented teams and great ideas. One, however, had access to overseas investment.

It meant that business had better machinery, tools that allowed their workers to be more efficient, more productive. It also meant they had access to valuable knowledge, expertise, and global networks that helped them market their product more effectively. It gave them the resources and know-how to scale, to innovate, and to compete at a higher level.

When workers have access to better tools and technologies, they become more productive. And when productivity increases, wages rise. Our country knows this deep down, and we are embracing the world as we seek to strengthen our connections through trade and investment.

Currently, our overseas investment regime processes about $19 billion in foreign investment each year. While this represents a fraction of the total foreign investment into our country, it captures major investments of significant value.

I want this number to grow, and I think there is desire out there to seize opportunities here.

But I’m aware that our existing screening regime has created barriers for potential investors. Our screening regime approves 98 per cent of applications. However, while many investments have little or no risk, investors must submit onerous applications demonstrating the benefits to New Zealand. That has made applications costly to prepare and time consuming to assess.

When I was put in charge of policy in this area fifteen months ago, I knew we needed change.

I found that two elected Ministers had to sign every consent, no matter how minor. Is it really a good use of time for two elected officials to sign off someone buying a paddock so they can plant grapes, because their passport doesn’t say New Zealand? I think we all know the answer, and that’s why I have delegated the majority of the decision-making to the regulator.

A minor thing, in the scheme of things, but it has sped up consents by several weeks and shows our direction of travel. The regulator now has the power to speed up decision-making, balancing the need for careful risk management with the urgency of encouraging more investment into New Zealand.

That change was part of a new Ministerial Direction letter with a range of simplifying measures. I’m pleased to say it was half the length of the one my predecessor wrote.

Since these changes were implemented, over 90 per cent of the consent applications received and processed have been decided in less than half the seventy-day statutory timeframe. This is a huge win for efficiency but it’s the only the start of the improvements we’re making.

We have made every change possible within Parliament’s current law, the Overseas Investment Act, so now we’re changing the law itself.

We’re undertaking a full review of our Overseas Investment Act, with an aim to make our investment regime even more investor-friendly while ensuring we continue to protect New Zealand’s long-term interests. The new regime will operate with a presumption in favour of foreign investment, acknowledging the significant benefits it can bring to our economy. Our intention is to introduce the law to Parliament in May and pass it into law by the end of the year.

Most critically, the changes will revise the presumption in the Act that it is “a privilege for overseas persons to own or control sensitive New Zealand assets” for asset classes other than residential land, farming, or fishing quota.

Removing the need to justify a privilege will simplify the consenting process. The process will instead focus on whether the investment might do harm to others or the environment that is not managed by our domestic regulations. It will create a two-track consenting regime, dependent on whether such risks are apparent.

For investments that are not in residential land, farmland, or fishing quota, we’ll make decisions in just 15 days, unless the application is potentially contrary to New Zealand’s national interest.

Investments that are subject to a national interest test will continue with a similar process to now, however we are managing rapid consent turn around even in that scenario.

Altogether, we can point to a track record of tangible change in our overseas investment regime. That record allows us to make credible commitments to further improvements planned this year. The take-out is a Government that is committed to attracting overseas investment that matches its words with actions, and a country that is becoming more attractive as a destination for overseas investors.

Regulatory reform

As I mentioned earlier, consenting overseas investment is one regulatory system that we are committed to reforming. We are committed to improving our regulatory environment across the board, and this Government has a very busy program of making it easier to use and exchange private property in this country.

We are not alone in the world when it comes to concerns about red tape and regulation. I think we can make a strong case, however, that we are a standout in tackling the problem.

There has been a red tape renaissance around the world recently, with many governments committing to cutting red tape. I recently saw it described in The Economistas ‘the revolt against regulation’. Countries all over the world are waking up to the impact of decades of laws and regulations, created at one time to ‘solve’ a problem or scratch an electoral itch, over time stacking up like lasagne until no one knows why they were implemented in the first place and if they’re achieving anything other than compliance.

One important step we’ve taken to address the encroachment of red tape across the economy is setting up the Ministry for Regulation. The idea behind the organisation is simple – bureaucracies have their own interests, and a department whose job is to enforce a rule isn’t going to suggest abolishing that rule. Which is where the Ministry for Regulation comes in, they make sure that the Government’s number one consideration is the impact on the regulated party. The Ministry is a major part of this government’s deregulation agenda.

One year ago, the Ministry for Regulation was given the task of improving the quality of regulation in New Zealand. The Ministry can now point to a growing list of deregulation measures helping businesses, workers, and consumers.

As a central agency, the Ministry’s role is to improve regulatory quality across the board, including the experience that New Zealanders have of complying with regulation.

In November last year, we launched a new Red Tape Tipline. This is an online tool on the Ministry’s website where people can make submissions about red tape that affects them. The Ministry is now assisting people by unblocking a myriad of little irritations so they can get back to doing what they do best; producing jobs for their employees, returns for their investors, and goods and services for their customers.

The Ministry is already working hard on the introduction of a Regulatory Standards Bill.The Bill will codify principles of good regulatory practice for existing and future regulations, ensuring regulatory decisions are based on principles of good law-making and economic efficiency.

To make regulatorsaccountable to the New Zealanders they regulate, the Bill proposes a Regulatory Standards Board. The Board will assess complaints and challenges to regulations. Raising the political cost of making bad laws by allowing New Zealanders to hold regulators accountable will result in better law-making, higher productivity, and higher wages for Kiwis.

With the passage of the Regulatory Standards Bill, new and existing laws will be tested against legislated principles of responsible regulation. I won’t elaborate on each one, but these principles establish standards for:

• The rule of law
• Liberties
• Taking of property
• Taxes, fees and levies
• The role of the courts
• Good lawmaking, including problem definition, cost-benefit analysis, and identification of where costs and benefits fall.

Publicly testing regulatory activity against these principles makes it easier for voters to monitor what their politicians are up to. In turn it changes the political calculus from politicians being rewarded for ‘doing something’ to politicians and officials being rewarded for doing something in line with sound regulatory principles.

Ultimately, this Bill will help the Government achieve its goal of improving productivity – ensuring that the regulatory system is transparent, has a mechanism for recourse, and holds regulators accountable to the people.

The Ministry is also tasked with reviewing existing regulations and making recommendations for improvement.

A recently-concluded review into agricultural and horticultural products – widely welcomed by farmers, growers and our agriculture industry – made 16 recommendations for change, with Cabinet accepting all recommendations.

The review found that halving approval times for new products is estimated to generate benefits of $272 million over twenty years for New Zealand farmers and growers.

Thanks to the work of the Ministry, farmers and growers will have faster access to new products which will lift primary sector productivity and growth.

That is one example. Another is Early Childhood Education. In New Zealand it is largely privately-run and amounts to a $6 billion dollar industry. Operators have felt neglected and infuriated by a regulatory system involving multiple agencies and a lack of clarity.

The Ministry for Regulation has listened to the operators, considered their concerns, and brought together the regulators to map out a new approach that addresses genuine public concerns, while making it easier for the sector to operate. As it gets up to speed, the Ministry will be reviewing a sector a quarter for the foreseeable future.

Deregulation across Government

As the Minister for Regulation, I’m proud to be leading the Government’s approach to regulatory policy, however it would be wrong to conclude that’s all we’re doing, or that our regulatory policy is entirely dependent on the Ministry’s efforts. Regulatory reform is a theme across the entire Government.

This Government is replacing its resource management laws. The new law will be premised on the fundamental principle of private property rights. The starting presumption is that you can use and develop your property, and objections should be grounded in impairment of the objectors’ property rights. The result will be a law that makes it easier to use and develop real property.

My colleague, Brooke van Velden, as Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, has repealed the previous Government’s attempt at industry-wide collective bargaining and has reintroduced 90-day employment trials. She’s now set her sights on simplifying our health and safety and employment laws too, providing certainty for employers and employees.

Another of my colleagues, Nicole McKee, is determined to fix our anti-money laundering laws and provide regulatory relief for individuals and businesses who use that law. This is alongside our Minister of Commerce Scott Simpson’s programme of financial sector regulatory reform.

Our team of agriculture ministers is removing some of the more illogical restrictions on our agricultural sector so farmers can get on with farming.

Our Minister for Energy, Simon Watts, is reversing the previous Government’s ban on offshore oil and gas exploration.

My Colleague Chris Penk, the Minister for Building and Housing, is opening the building products market to foreign competition in a drive to get prices down.

My colleague Chris Bishop is making it easier to get on and build the infrastructure our country desperately needs, as you heard from him earlier.

There is a significant regulatory reform programme happening across nearly every sector of our Government. The result will be a greater ease of doing business, more investment from inside and outside our shores, and better productivity.

Conclusion

We all know that capital is highly mobile, and investors are looking for safe and stable countries to do business.

I am excited by the opportunities presented through the major reforms the Government is making.

We’re creating the conditions that make it even easier for businesses like yours to invest, innovate and grow in New Zealand. We do that because we know it’s a win-win – investment leads to productivity, which leads to higher wages and happier lives.

A troubled world needs a frontier. That’s a space for pioneers. My ancestors started coming to these islands 800 years ago, and migrants continue to join my wider family this century. We are a nation of immigrants.

What we all share is the pioneering spirit that drove us here. We have an ambition to make tomorrow better than today through our own efforts. I believe that culture is more valuable than anything physical, because the greatest natural resource is human creativity.

It also makes us wonderful partners for like-minded people around the world. People who seek to trade value for value and get stronger together. I hope that after this conference, you will see New Zealand as a special place of opportunity, just as my family has for 800 years.

Thank you.

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Ka nui te mihi kia kotou, kia ora, and good morning everyone. 

To those of you visiting us from overseas, can I extend a very special welcome to each and every one of you. 

Welcome to New Zealand, welcome to the best country on planet Earth, and welcome to our stunning Auckland waterfront. 

And to all those Kiwis I see in the room today, thank you for being here and showcasing some of the extraordinary businesses and talent that exists in our business community. 

And it was a real pleasure to meet many of you informally last night, and my Ministers and I are really looking forward to spending much more time with you over the next two days. 

I meant it before when I said this is the best country on planet Earth. 

Because what makes New Zealand so very special and unique is our Kiwi Spirit which is exemplified in the qualities, character, and attitude of New Zealanders.  

For us, it‘s about resilience and determination, ingenuity and innovation, adventure and exploration, creativity and practical problem-solving, humility and mateship, fairness, and a deep care for our land and community. 

It’s no surprise that growing up in New Zealand, our heroes are Kiwi trailblazers and pioneers, people who have dared to push boundaries, challenge the status quo, and leave a lasting mark on the world.

From our early Māori explorers navigating vast oceans guided by the stars, to modern-day adventurers like Sir Edmund Hillary conquering Everest.   

To Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics, who split the atom and revolutionised our understanding of science. To Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck and his groundbreaking developments in rocket technology launching satellites into space. 

And Kate Shepperd, who secured New Zealand women the right to vote – the very first country in the world to do so. 

And our phenomenal athletes who show the world what determination and talent can achieve. Or the stunning world of The Lord of the Rings created by one of our most creative storytellers – Peter Jackson.

We may be a small country, but time and again, we have proven that size is no barrier to greatness. From the peaks of Everest to the frontlines of social progress, from scientific breakthroughs to arts and sporting legends, Kiwis have led the way.

And we’re living in an age when New Zealand has never been closer to the action – right in the middle of the booming Indo-Pacific with direct connections to Asia and North America. 

With the weight of global economic activity shifting from the Atlantic to the Pacific and digital connections breaking down barriers, New Zealand has never been closer to the world.  

But for all our spirit and hard work, we also know New Zealand can’t do it alone. 

We’re a small country of around five million people like Ireland, Singapore, and Denmark. 

Just as those countries have prospered by tapping into larger markets, building stronger international connections, and fostering trade and investment, New Zealand needs to do the same. 

If we want our country to thrive, we need to work even harder to compete on the world stage – and, in particular, to unlock the commercial partnerships that will supercharge the next generation of growth in the New Zealand economy. 

That means the Government will work more with Industry to deliver much of the infrastructure and projects that will be showcased over the next two days. 

Many of your organisations will have extensive experience delivering outstanding world-class infrastructure to national and regional governments worldwide.

I want New Zealand to seize every opportunity to partner with the private sector and deliver a fresh generation of infrastructure investment to unleash economic growth.  

But it’s not just infrastructure. 

I want to develop closer ties between outstanding New Zealanders and their companies based here, with investors and organisations based offshore.  

I also want to unlock more partnerships between indigenous Iwi Māori organisations and commercial investors, whether they are based in Auckland or Abu Dhabi, Dunedin or Denver.  

I want start-ups based in Christchurch and Hamilton fighting for seed capital in San Francisco and London – winning their share of global influence and success. 

Breaking perceptions about the New Zealand economy is critical to that. 

Yes, we have globally competitive dairy, film, and tourist industries, but our space industry is also operating at the cutting edge, ranking fourth in the world for launches behind the US, China, and Russia. 

Over the next two days, you will hear more about our plan to unleash growth and ensure New Zealand reaches its full potential. 

We want you to join us on that journey, and we will have several opportunities on display. 

That will include the opportunity to deliver infrastructure in partnership with the Crown – both in the form of immediate opportunities and the pipeline of projects going forward. 

It will include working with Iwi Māori organisations to grow their businesses as they make a multigenerational investment in their people. 

It will include opportunities in a range of specific sectors where we believe New Zealand has a unique role to play and where we expect the Government to focus its efforts on growth. 

In the very short term, we have made good economic progress in our first year in Government, although there’s still a long way to go. 

New Zealand is now in the early stages of a cyclical economic recovery, with growth beginning to pick up and unemployment expected to peak around its current rate. 

Inflation has fallen and now sits comfortably anchored within the Reserve Bank’s target band at 2.2%. 

Annual tourism expenditure was up 23% last year, and services and manufacturing activity have returned to growth after extended periods of contraction. 

Business confidence is at around its highest level in a decade. As confidence has risen, retail trade has picked up, and growth is expected to rise, hitting 3% in 2026. 

So, there’s now cause for optimism in the New Zealand economy that the recovery is underway and better days lie ahead. 

For policymakers here in New Zealand, that poses an opportunity – not just to watch the economic recovery, but to shape it. 

Step-changing economic productivity, lifting incomes, creating jobs, and unleashing the investment New Zealand needs to become much more prosperous.  

Which brings us to today. 

I know the only way we will raise incomes, lift New Zealanders’ standard of living, and fund the quality public services we rely on is by unlocking more investment, more innovation, and more entrepreneurship.

Having broken inflation last year, our collective focus has now turned to shaping the economic recovery – ensuring we take every possible step to lift New Zealand’s economic performance. 

That renewed energy and effort forms the backdrop of this Summit. 

My Government is working around the clock to make New Zealand an outstanding place to do business. 

But before I highlight some of those reforms and my economic priorities as Prime Minister, I want to make a more fundamental point about New Zealand as an investment destination. 

New Zealand has been and will continue to be a poster child for social and political stability in a more volatile and challenging world. 

That reputation is long-standing, but in challenging times, it has come into sharper focus. 

We stand up for our values and live by them, too. That means respecting civil liberties, private property and private life, and the democratic and social institutions that underpin them. 

We consistently advocate for a rules-based international order that allows small countries like New Zealand to thrive. Free trade isn’t just an idea in New Zealand; it’s the bedrock of our prosperity. 

For farmers and growers living in rural New Zealand, it has allowed a modern economic miracle: the opportunity to not just collectively operate one of the most efficient agricultural sectors in the world but to live in some of the most stunning parts of the world while they do it. 

Finally, we might disagree sometimes – but we’re not disagreeable. Over the next two days, you will hear from various political leaders.

You will hear from senior Ministers representing each of the three political parties in our Coalition Government, as well as Barbara Edmonds, the Labour Party’s Opposition Finance Spokesperson.  

It’s pretty normal in New Zealand for political parties to disagree with each other – often loudly, and sometimes even with my own Coalition colleagues. 

But I believe the broad political representation that is here demonstrates that most New Zealanders share the same motivations – higher incomes and more financial freedom, quality public services, and a long-standing belief that our best days lie ahead of us. 

When you look at all the tension, volatility, and strife in the world today, I think that makes us pretty special, and a very attractive destination for anyone looking to take shelter from the global storm. 

Political stability, however, is not an excuse for a lack of ambition. 

You should be under no illusions about my commitment to the Government’s growth agenda and the reforms we are pushing through to unleash investment in the New Zealand economy. 

Last month, Minister for Economic Growth Nicola Willis published our Government’s Going for Growth Agenda – we have copies for you here – which outlines a range of actions we are taking to get the New Zealand economy moving and realising its vast potential. 

Each of those actions fits into one of five pillars we have identified as critical to lifting economic growth and improving New Zealanders’ standard of living:

1. Developing talent,
2. Encouraging innovation, science, and technology,
3. Introducing competitive business settings,
4. Promoting global trade and investment,
5. And delivering infrastructure for growth. 

Across each of those pillars, we have Ministers from across the Government working day and night to drive through reform – in transport,  tourism, aquaculture, construction, advanced aviation, mining, energy, agriculture, and horticulture. 

Over the next two days, you will hear much more about our work programme in those areas that will play a critical role in the next phase of New Zealand’s growth story – with more information on a series of specific investable propositions available in the private sector. 

Among that reform programme are some significant changes designed to achieve a profound step change in the New Zealand economy that I would like to touch on today. 

For a start, we are clearing away decades of broken planning law – brick by brick. 

We have introduced the Fast Track regime, which streamlines the consenting process for projects that are regionally and nationally significant. 

In short, instead of seeking different permissions under different laws, under Fast Track, it’s all done in one place, with a faster process and fewer hurdles to getting underway. 

That regime is now up and running, and I know a number of projects have already submitted applications since it became operational last month. 

In short, if you want to build a wind farm, a highway, a quarry, hundreds of new homes, or any other regionally or nationally significant projects, we are busting down the doors to make it happen faster and cheaper. 

149 projects have already been listed in legislation, but nothing prevents new projects from applying for referral into the scheme. 

And it doesn’t stop with Fast Track. 

Further planning reforms are also on the way, including a total replacement of the Resource Management Act. 

We are also eliminating the barriers to more significant investment in energy and generation to unleash abundant, affordable energy. 

The impact of unaffordable and unreliable energy on economic growth has been brought into the spotlight in recent years following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Industries in Europe that had historically relied on access to low-cost natural gas came under tremendous strain, putting pressure on growth and household incomes. 

In New Zealand, we are lucky that 85% of electricity generation is already renewable, thanks to decades of investment in hydro, wind, solar, and geothermal.  

But we can’t risk falling short in the years to come. So, as a Government, we are tearing down the barriers to fresh energy investment. That means introducing more permissive rules for renewables.

But it also means ending restrictions on offshore oil and gas exploration – and providing certainty for market participants by confidently saying that gas has to be part of New Zealand’s energy mix going forward.  

At the same time, we are making it easier to invest in New Zealand from offshore.  

That started last year, with fresh directives to our Overseas Investment Office, which slashed processing times and made applications more predictable. 

Today, an application for offshore investment is approved within 18 days on average, compared to 28 days prior to those changes.

And two weeks ago, we announced upcoming changes to legislation designed to further improve the timeliness and reliability of our overseas investment regime. 

We also announced just last month that, from April 1 this year, individuals who invest at least $5 million in New Zealand will be eligible for an Active Investor Visa, with a pathway to residency after three years. 

I know that for many of you from offshore in this room, that will be positive news. But as a New Zealander, I have to say it’s an even bigger deal for the sharp, ambitious Kiwis here and all around the country, who are hungry for capital and hungry to grow. 

We know the impact foreign investment has on local businesses. It’s not just the capital investment; it’s the skills, connections, and linkages into new markets. 

That translates into higher wages, more jobs, more money in Kiwi wallets, and more resilient businesses that make an even greater contribution in the community. 

We need more of it, especially for a small country hungry to grow like New Zealand, which is why I have invited many of you here today. 

I believe New Zealand’s best days are ahead of us—and we can make them happen if we get serious about partnering with commercial expertise to solve some of our biggest economic challenges and seize on the huge economic opportunities ahead of us. 

Helping to end New Zealand’s infrastructure deficit through private sector partnership.

Fattening out our capital markets and opening up new sectors for growth.

Strengthening our connections to the world, enhancing technology, lifting productivity, and opening new markets for our products and services. 

Over the next two days, you will hear from a range of leaders—cabinet Ministers, business leaders, and Iwi Māori leaders—who I know are committed to responding to our challenges and opportunities. 

There will also be plenty of time across both days for closer interactions and to discuss the opportunities and challenges that you are confronting in your own businesses. 

While you’re here, please also enjoy our hospitality and culture. We’re not just here to do business—we’re here to build relationships and make the case for New Zealand as an outstanding country to invest in, to visit, and to establish roots in. 

So once again, and on behalf of the New Zealand Government and the New Zealand people, welcome to this year’s Summit. 

I’m excited to get stuck in – and I can’t wait to hear more from you over the next two days about your approach to business and the difference you could make for growth, investment, jobs, and opportunity for us here in New Zealand. 

Thank you. 

Source: NZ Music Month takes to the streets

Tēnā koutou katoa.

Good morning and thank you to FintechNZ for having me here today.

Thank you especially to executive director Jason Roberts, and for putting together such fabulous event.

It is wonderful to be speaking to such a large audience. I am told there are nearly 400 attendees today, which speaks to the exciting growth that the fintech sector has undergone in New Zealand over recent years. 

I understand that this event outgrew last year’s venue. That is excellent news for you – but it’s also excellent news for New Zealand as fintechs have so much to offer our country and our economy.

As a small, sparsely populated country at the bottom of the world, high-value, weightless exports like fintech products have significant economic potential. 

I am delighted to be speaking to you as the new Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister.

Commerce and Consumer Affairs is a significant – although little understood – portfolio.

In simple terms – and as the name suggests – there are two key strands to the portfolio:

1. First, a responsibility to ensure that the laws and regulations that govern our commercial environment are fit for purpose and enable businesses to safely and easily transact. That includes responsibility for legislation like the Companies Act and Commerce Act – two laws which are currently undergoing long overdue reviews.
2. Second, is a responsibility to safeguard the interests of consumers and ensure that their rights are fairly upheld. That’s the consumer affairs side and includes responsibility for legislation like the Fair Trading Act, which I am planning to launch a review of later this year. 

Balancing these two halves requires careful consideration and we don’t always get it right. It’s possible to end up with policies that favour commercial entities over consumers or consumers over commercial entities. 

And both of these scenarios are equally bad. Without adequate consumer protections, businesses lose their social license and infringe on consumers’ rights and freedoms. And without sufficiently open and well-functioning markets, businesses fail and people lose their job and income, and are faced with fewer choices.

However, when policy works well, it can – and should – benefit both commercial entities and consumers. 

That’s the sweet spot that a good Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister should be aiming for.

The fantastic thing about the fintech sector is that it speaks equally convincingly to both sides of the equation. 

From a commerce perspective, fintechs offer opportunities for improving productivity, generating revenue and creating jobs and exports.

Equally fantastic are the opportunities offered to consumers through innovative products and enhanced competition, leading to greater choice and freedom.

So, safe to say I am excited to be here and excited to be beginning what I intend to be an open and collaborative relationship with the fintech sector.

Background

I know that my predecessor, Andrew Bayly, was very engaged with the sector and that he was in active discussion with many of you about how the Government can support you to grow and innovate. 

I share Andrew’s enthusiasm and I am looking forward to continuing at pace the work he started with you. 

I want to be clear that from a policy perspective it is full steam ahead and there is no intention to slow down or change direction. 

Work underway

In the Commerce and Consumer Affairs space, many of our regulations and legislation have languished and there was a fairly urgent need to reform some of the foundational pieces of architecture. 

I mentioned earlier that we are reviewing the Companies Act and reforming our corporate governance laws – this hasn’t happened in nearly 30 years.

Likewise, our competition settings have become increasingly out of step with our trading partners. I doubt any of you in the room are unaware that New Zealand suffers from a crucial lack of competition in key sectors – including, importantly, banking. 

We have also placed ourselves at a competitive disadvantage by not keeping pace with transformative technologies, including crypto, blockchain and ‘open banking’ – to name a few.

I am aware of concerns from the fintech sector that our regulatory and legal environment have not sufficiently adapted to allow for these technologies and that there has been a lack of leadership and strategic direction. 

Some of you have been participating on government led roundtables and with officials at MBIE and FMA. I hope that through that engagement you are sensing a change in tone and are experiencing a new willingness to respond to issues.

FMA’s regulatory sandbox

For example, I am optimistic about the FMA’s “regulatory sandbox” and keen to hear your feedback as the process continues.

I understand that the FMA received 24 applications and will, by the end of March, be notifying successful applicants.

Please keep in touch with me and my officials about your experience.

It is my hope that the sandbox will enable fintechs to save time, reduce costs and bring innovative products to market sooner. 

But the sandbox is also an opportunity for the FMA to identify unnecessary red tape that poses an industry-wide barrier.

I am aware that there are regulatory barriers that prevent fintechs from competing on a level playing field, and I am determined to work with Government and industry to remove these barriers.

Consumer data right

I am delighted that we are finally establishing a ‘consumer data right’ and advancing plans to roll out ‘open banking’.

Commerce Ministers have been talking about ‘open banking’ for nearly 10 years. 

In August 2017, the then Minister Jacqui Dean wrote to Payments NZ encouraging them to advance payments technology. 

Safe to say the time for writing letters of encouragement has been and gone. 

As many of you know, the Customer and Product Data Bill, which is currently before Parliament, establishes a framework to enable access to, and sharing of, customer data.

This is a transformative piece of legislation that has the potential to reshape our economy. 

The legislation lays the foundation for ‘open banking’ and eventually ‘open electricity’, ‘open insurance’, ‘open telecommunications’ and more. The possibilities are immense.

The Bill passed second reading in Parliament last week and is scheduled for further consideration this week. 

We are moving as fast as we can, and have committed to passing it through all stages by the end of Q1 this year.

Soon after the Bill passes, we will be applying it on a sector-by-sector basis through regulations.

Banking will be the first cab off the rank, and my team are working with industry to develop the banking regulations. 

Our goal is to have open banking fully operational by the end of the year.

Again, please keep in touch with me throughout this process. 

I am conscious that open banking has the potential to over promise and under deliver and I know that uptake in other jurisdictions has been underwhelming. 

The single greatest benefit of being slow is that we can learn from others’ mistakes and there are some important differences in our approach compared to Australia, for example.

But this doesn’t mean we have all the answers. For open banking to deliver on the promise of increased competition and greater consumer choice, we need your buy in.

My officials and I are acutely aware of the need to balance safety and security with openness and accessibility. We also know that we need to agree a pricing model that allows enough income generation to support innovation but is affordable.

Please make sure you are actively participating in these discussions. Let’s do it once and do it right. 

Banking competition

Continuing with the theme of competition, in August last year, the Commerce Commission released its final report into personal banking services.

The report found that banks do not face strong competition, and made 14 recommendations, which we have committed to implementing.

As well as open banking, this includes increasing the emphasis on competition in the Reserve Bank’s prudential regulation and payment systems, capitalising Kiwibank, and addressing issues in the anti-money laundering regime.

Many of these recommendations fall within the Finance Miniter’s portfolio, however please know that I will be advocating internally on your behalf.

Driving better competition across the economy, but in particular in banking, is a key concern for the Finance Miniter, and I will be working closely with her to achieve this.

Financial services reform

Finally, before I close off, I want to touch on an important piece of work underway to reform how financial services are regulated in New Zealand. 

Changes to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act in 2019 saw a big increase in the time it took to process consumer loans. Applicants who would have previously qualified for a mortgage were suddenly being turned down. 

The Conduct of Institutions (or CoFI) regime was another change in the system, requiring large product providers like banks and insurers to implement fair conduct programmes. 

Last year, Cabinet agreed to changes to reduce the complexity and conservatism baked into the CCCFA, streamline requirements in the incoming CoFI legislation, and improve the transparency and effectiveness of the dispute resolution system. 

Legislation to make these changes will be introduced shortly, subject to Cabinet agreement. 

These changes will simplify the financial services regulatory environment.

I realise this may not sound like super exciting work, but enabling consumers and businesses to safely and efficiently access credit when they need it, is vital for our economy. 

When the money stops, everything stops.

Closing remarks 

In closing, I would like to thank everyone here for the role you play in helping to shape a more productive and innovative economy. 

I am keen to hear about other actions that the Government can take to make the fintech sector thrive and am looking forward to engaging with you throughout the year.

Thank you again for having me here today. 

Enjoy your day and stay in touch. 

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.