Luxon wants bipartisan agreement over major infrastructure projects

Thursday, 15 August 2024

Christopher Luxon wants bipartisan agreement over major infrastructure projects in New Zealand to provide certainty to construction and finance partners.

The Prime Minister toured Sydney’s new under-harbour tunnel today - part of New South Wales’ decade-long building boom.

He met with the heads of the state’s infrastructure agency to gain intel on how NSW had pulled off major builds.

Luxon says New Zealand’s hot-cold approach with the change of political winds has led to the country’s ongoing infrastructure deficit.

“All New Zealanders would understand we have an infrastructure deficit. We as a government are working very hard at fixing that.”

“I think the challenge in New Zealand is you get a change in political cycle, or economic cycle and you get on off, on off, and nothing’s happening,” he said.

Graham Bradley, chair of Infrastructure New South Wales, says long-term indications from government are crucial to getting major projects off the ground.

“It’s very important for the construction industry, if it’s going to be cost efficient, that it has certainty a project will be seen through, right?”

Along with bipartisan certainty, the answer to Sydney’s success lies in public private partnerships and asset sales.

The New South Wales state government sold off its power transmission assets to fund billions of dollars of infrastructure.

When Stuff asked if Christopher Luxon was open to asset sales to fix the infrastructure deficit, he was non-committal, simply saying “that hasn’t been the focus of our conversation”.

Luxon’s trip to Sydney foreshadowed the annual Australia New Zealand Leaders Meeting with his Australian counterpart in Canberra on Friday.

Since the pair last met in March on the sides of the ASEAN Australia summit, Anthony Albanese reversed a softening of Australia’s hard-line deportation policy.

The deportation of New Zealanders who had little connection to Aotearoa, having left while young, has caused major ructions in the trans-Tasman relationship.

Figures provided to ThreeNews show since 2015, over a third of those deported back here had left New Zealand when they were under the age of 20.

In 2022, Prime Minister Albanese signed an order committing to take into account time spent in Australia in deportation decisions - labelling it a “common sense” approach.

But in May this year Albanese caved to domestic pressure and ripped up the common sense policy. Luxon was blindsided and called the decision “wrong” at the time.

Official figures show there have been 118 people deported from Australia to NZ this year, with no influx after the return to tougher rules.

In July, the first month since the decision took effect, there were 17 people deported from Australia to New Zealand, which is about in line with the rest of the months this year.

But Luxon still plans to raise the issue with Albanese again.

“We want to make sure we have a common sense approach, people with very little connection to NZ shouldn’t be sent back to NZ frankly,” Luxon said.

“We’ll continue to advocate very strongly for it, we have a difference of opinion on it, we will articulate that.”

On Thursday night Luxon is due to deliver his first major foreign policy speech to the Lowy institute in Sydney, he’s expected to elaborate on his government’s foreign policy reset.

Watch the full ThreeNews report from Stuff’s senior political correspondent Jenna Lynch in the video above.

ThreeNews is produced by Stuff and live from 6pm on Three and ThreeNow.