Siobhan Hartwell, head of GHD’s business in New Zealand and the Pacific, says the local priorities identified in the report are not surprising. They are in line with thinking in all countries surveyed, but especially so in the surveyed English-speaking nations: Australia, Canada, the UK and US. Other countries surveyed are Singapore, UAE, Chile, the Philippines and Qatar. “These are clearly the big issues in many countries and that’s what we expected,” said Hartwell.
Yet, she says, as well as taking a country-by-country look at attitudes, the report also focused on different generations, and viewed through that lens, the results were less predictable. Understanding attitudes across different age groups is important for any research on infrastructure projects because they are by their nature multigenerational.
“I was surprised to see that, in general, Generation Z and Millennials seem to be more positive than Baby Boomers and Generation X. I thought that might be the other way around. It’s not pronounced, but I thought Gen Z would be the most negative, but they don’t seem to be,” Hartwell said.
What the report threw up
GHD chief economist David Norman says another unexpected finding is that the older half of New Zealand’s population is more positive than their peers in Australia, Canada, and the UK, while the younger half — Millennials and Generation Z — were more negative than their counterparts in other English-speaking countries: “This is interesting; it shows there is a more obvious generational shift in New Zealand than we see elsewhere.”
GHD chief economist David Norman
The report revealed a factor that could become a problem: while people will say they care about water or the environment, they are not necessarily willing to pay more to get better outcomes. “This is not just in New Zealand, but we found New Zealand is one of the countries where people are the least willing to pay more. It’s only human nature, but it suggests that our decision-makers have a lot of hard work to do to make sure that they provide the outcomes people want and expect without breaking the bank. And that means a lot more prioritisation.”
Norman says this means we will need to stick to our knitting.
“We must put aside the things that are fluffy and nice to have, to focus on delivering all the fundamental things people are most concerned about. Governments can’t just tell people they’ll have to pay a whole lot more - that’s never going to encourage voters.
“We’re going to have to get better at the trade-offs.
“A lot of the work I do with councils and central government clients is about helping them prioritise between the endless list of things they could be doing and the things that are going to make the biggest difference.”
Hartwell explains the lack of willingness to pay for sustainability and the other benefits of infrastructure investment might not be what it appears on the surface. “It would be wrong to draw the inference that younger people don’t care about sustainability. They may be willing to pay if they could afford it, but they struggle with finances in a way that doesn’t affect the older age groups.”
The Crossroads report puts this into perspective. Researchers found 35% of New Zealand citizens face financial strain due to the high proportion of their income that needs to be spent on housing while 17% of New Zealand responders say they spend more than 50% of household income on mortgage or rent.
This is the highest proportion of any nation covered in the report and well above the 11% average measured across all 10 countries.
Encouraging change
Water is a case in point. Hartwell says the report showed a generation gap with older people more willing to pay for water, younger people less so.
In part that comes back to their relative inability to pay, but she says there is also a problem with people not necessarily understanding the real issues surrounding water: “If we don’t get to a point as a nation where we fully comprehend and act on the magnitude of the problem, we are going to keep going downhill.
“People see water coming out of a tap or disappearing when they flush the toilet, but they don’t think about where it comes from or where it goes. And many people think it should be free because it comes out of the sky. But there are all the costs that go with the infrastructure needed for water.
“We compare badly with other nations when it comes to using water; we are inefficient with our water use across much of the country. In places like Auckland where there is water metering, people take far more care because there is an incentive to reduce use. In Christchurch, water use per person here is twice what it is in Auckland because the cost of using water is hidden in the rates bill.
“There is nothing to encourage people to change their behaviour.”
Hartwell says, as a nation, we need to talk about this subject more and educate people on the issues.
“I was very frustrated around media coverage of the previous Government’s water reforms because there were so many good things in the plan, but it was sidelined because it became so political. It was an ideal opportunity to educate people about water use and about infrastructure in general, how it relates to us as individuals and our own responsibility in relation to it.”
The idea governments and councils are simply going to come up with solutions to infrastructure problems that go over our heads is not restricted to New Zealand. Hartwell says all surveyed countries show a degree of this belief.
GHD found a small but noticeable difference in the way English-speaking countries perceive infrastructure and the way it is viewed in non-English-speaking countries.
Though New Zealand is in the English-speaking camp, attitudes here are closer to those in non-English-speaking countries surveyed.
Housing, environment and transport came through as key focus areas for New Zealanders in the Crossroads report. Hartwell says it is important we take those messages and work out how we, as a nation, can respond to them.
It won’t be easy: “There’s a lot of talk about new fast-track processes to get things moving, but for us to do things well we need long-term planning that takes in environmental matters and looks at social needs.
“We need to understand where transport fits in the picture and take a multi-generational approach. That’s something we have not done well as a country before now. There are good examples of where these things have been done well: Hobsonville in Auckland is a showcase, but the process to develop started a very long time ago; it didn’t happen overnight.”
Norman says environmental awareness is another generational difference that throws up unexpected attitudes. “It is interesting that in the survey older generations claim they are doing more than younger people when it comes to things like recycling and composting, reducing water use, repairing products instead of buying new. I expected to see younger people being more environmentally conscious, but that wasn’t the case.
“Some of these activities are age-related. We asked if people are walking or cycling rather than driving and we weren’t surprised to see young people do more of that. But we found concern for the environment wasn’t something you only care about if you are under 30.”
There are two areas where New Zealand stood out from the rest of the world. Norman says across the 10 nations surveyed, New Zealanders spent the least amount of time working from home. “Even with all the shifts that we saw as a consequence of lockdowns and so on.
“We tend to think we are living in this brave new world, but when compared with the nine other countries we are more conventional and far less likely to work from home.”
New Zealanders are also behind the pack when it comes to the use of recycled water. There’s a clear connection here with Māori cultural practice.
Norman says when GHD asked people if they were open to the idea of recycled water, half of all New Zealanders said no, a significantly lower proportion than anywhere else. “We’re lower than Canada or the US. We’re a lot lower than Australia and we are massively lower than other countries.”
He says this is something that we may have to get over as we look for pragmatic solutions to overcoming our huge infrastructure challenges.
