Sport means a lot to us as Kiwis - it’s part of our DNA. A big win or a tough loss can shift the mood of the whole country. It’s more than just a game; it’s part of the backbone of our culture. Just look at the numbers — the All Blacks have a 76% winning record, and the Black Ferns are even more impressive with 82%.
What’s our win rate on infrastructure projects? I think anyone in the industry would confidently tell you that it’s much, much worse. I’m not sure it would be above 50%. Infrastructure is the backbone of our entire economy, yet we underperform on delivering and maintaining our most essential facilities and systems.
If New Zealand closed its infrastructure gap, the International Monetary Fund estimates that our GDP would increase by up to 0.8% in the long term, according to MBIE. That might sound small, but our GDP for the year to March was $430 billion, so an 0.8% increase would add $3.44 billion – how many hospitals, affordable housing builds or expressways could that fund?
A crisis of accountability and bureaucracy
I feel that the construction industry is crippled by an accountability problem. Nobody wants to be the person who signs off on a project that goes wrong later. People are scared to make a decision and put that signature on the dotted line, because if things go belly-up, the backlash doesn’t necessarily just fall on the regulatory body, it could also have personal consequences for those involved. And that potential backlash could be significant, be it financial, legal or reputational.
To avoid taking responsibility, approval for a project requires jumping through a series of hoops. This keeps even small projects tied up in bureaucracy and red tape that adds a huge amount of time to any works or construction – and every day of hold-ups brings financial costs. For homeowners, this might manifest as a huge paperwork headache for even a small extension, garage conversion or swimming pool. At the civil construction level, navigating the Resource
Management Act (RMA) can take months or even years
Concerns about reputation and backlash also lead to outlandish delays to projects that are already underway. An $85 million new wastewater tank in Porirua was put on hold for six months when native northern grass skinks were found on site. Eventually 59 skinks were caught by hand and moved to a new home. Nobody wants to be the person whose face is on the front page next to a headline about dead skinks. But a six-month, million-dollar delay for 59 skinks? Northern grass skinks are “abundant” around our coastlines and not a threatened or endangered species, according to DOC. We obviously have obligations to care for local fauna, but what about our obligations to the people whose livelihoods and business rely on the progress of these projects?
Long-term planning would reduce the heavy costs of downturns
There are some changes underway to address the accountability issue, including the proposed self-certification scheme for builders and reduced inspection wait times. Additional overseas products are now permitted, which will help reduce the 50% higher cost of building a house in New Zealand compared to Australia. The RMA is being replaced with a new system that aims to “shift from precautionary to permissive, and get rid of the absurd bespokism of navigating new consents and conditions for things we’ve done many times before,” according to a Beehive press release.
Perhaps the most encouraging aspect is the “once-in-a-generation” National Infrastructure Plan that is designed to set out a vision for the next 30 years. It has the potential to be truly ground-breaking - especially if we can achieve cross-party agreement on both the plan and its implementation, regardless of who’s in government. Funding has always been a sticking point. But will it remain an excuse for inaction in a small country that often says it can’t afford what it needs?
Or is it time to think differently about how we fund and protect our infrastructure future?
We don’t achieve rugby dominance by firing most of the team and the management any time there’s a loss, then desperately try to hire new players from overseas before the next game. Yet that’s the kind of reactive yo-yo we constantly see in the construction industry because of the lack of clarity and constant changing of minds depending on the political climate. Every downturn sees significant layoffs, our experienced workers move to Australia, and that talent is then likely lost for good.
We also see widespread business failures in the sector. There were 765 liquidations in the construction industry for the year to July 2025, according to Centrix data, up 46% on the previous year. Those liquidations hollow out the sector and have a massive human cost in terms of financial security and mental wellbeing.
Infrastructure has a high degree of predictability. We can forecast the maintenance and construction required, we can budget for it, and we can lift our performance enormously by avoiding this boom-and-bust cycle.
Everyone who has ever been involved with a construction or infrastructure project knows better planning leads to lower overall costs. A long-term pipeline would reduce the risk of cancelled projects, last-minute changes and unbudgeted emergency work – all of which drive up the cost to the taxpayer. The 2025 Construction Industry Survey by Teletrac Navman and Civil Contractors NZ found 85% of respondents believed “a clearer pipeline of central and local government work would have a positive impact.”
Comments from respondents outlined their worries. They cited a list of problems including red tape, inefficiencies, stops and starts, and consenting delays as causing a lack of work for contractors.
As one person noted, “Hurry up with consents to start all the bigger jobs like motorway extension jobs. It will stop big players sniffing around the medium size jobs which will open work flow. As of April, May and June I see a lot of bigger companies buying work which is a quick race to the bottom.”
When contractors are caught in this race to the bottom, nobody wins. The big players don’t make a profit and the smaller players are starving for work. It’s no wonder we’ve seen so many liquidations recently. The stress alone has been enough to drive many senior expertise away from the industry altogether.
Singapore has a similar population to ours, with a long-term plan that stretches for 40 to 50 years. It has a world-class infrastructure ecosystem with early scoping, best practice sharing and brokering, as the Global Infrastructure Hub describes it. We need to borrow some of that system and apply it here, so we can start to achieve better results and lift our infrastructure performance.
Admittedly, Singapore isn’t much of a threat when it comes to sports. Maybe we can do a trade? We’ll give Singapore some of our sporting expertise in exchange for their infrastructure advice.
Come on New Zealand, we need to raise our game. A win at the Olympics is lovely for fans, but when it comes to infrastructure success, it’s a win for absolutely everyone.
