KEY POINTS:
This week the Government's "rolling maul" of responses to the economic crisis moves to increase spending on the nation's infrastructure. The announcement by Prime Minister John Key will be important for jobs, regional development, business confidence and in catering for future generations. So it is critical the Government not focus on quantity over quality, presenting a long list of projects when the right list is required.
As ministers finalise their choices, one of the country's biggest infrastructure works of the decade provides a searing lesson on half-hearted development. The Northern Gateway Toll Road between Orewa and Puhoi is as a magnificent stretch of tarmac and scenery, achieved on time and on budget, but it's already compromised by the peak volumes of public holidays that it was hoping to alleviate.
It is too early to conclude that the system for paying tolls will need change, but it is not too early to state the obvious: the toll road has shifted traffic jams from Orewa to Puhoi, as so many motorists suspected it would. Most, though, surely thought it was so obvious and predictable that planners at the former Transit New Zealand would have ensured it could not happen. Sadly not. The Waitangi Day holiday weekend started as badly as the worst long weekends of old.
While there will need to be accountability over the failure to smooth congestion, the broader lesson for those hatching new public projects is that half an answer to a problem is no answer. On the toll road, at the strategic level the next stretch of highway north ought already to have been under construction and at the tactical, the system for manual payments should be vastly more motorist-friendly. Transit seems to have adopted a piecemeal approach to some projects, evidenced by the new Mangatawhiri highway, which ends inexplicably at a narrow bridge rather than carrying on to a logical and seamless point of rejoining the existing road.
It will be tempting for ministers to try this week to tick off many piecemeal projects, but they ought to focus on doing the most-needed works properly. A little more money, even a lot, and a bit more time will be tolerated by the public if the result is a public service that is truly future-proofed.
Roads apart, the announcement is likely to highlight National's promise to extend high-speed broadband. Governments everywhere are talking up the economic benefits of super-fast internet access. In the immediate term the greatest benefit ought to be in securing work for people in industries beyond the construction sector. If the infrastructure stimulus is to save jobs it needs to do so across sectors; the broadband initiative is a high-tech complement to other
projects likely to feature. However, improved broadband in itself may not be an economic saviour. The Economist has noted that the physical introduction of higher-speed broadband is the greatest promoter of economic activity, not the uses to which consumers put their new facility later. Neither South Korea nor Japan, with high rates of high-speed connections, has demonstrably benefited in relative economic growth or emergence of new applications.
One initiative jettisoned in advance by the incoming National government was a Greens-Labour move to insulate homes at a cost, over time, of $1 billion. Given the need to save jobs in construction and accepting the arguments for energy conservation and improved primary health, it seems National must accept that this scheme needs to be resurrected. Australia is spending billions to retrofit homes as part of its large economic stimulus package. There is bound to be a lasting benefit for the dollars injected. And that ought to be the key test for all "crisis" spending. A list of highly visible quick-fixes with dubious long-term value is the last thing the country needs.
