National Leader Simon Bridges is promising his party will be the 'party of infrastructure'

Opposition Leader Simon Bridges has promised that National will be the "party of infrastructure" if it wins power in next year's election. Photo / Alex Burton

Opposition Leader Simon Bridges has promised that National will be the "party of infrastructure" if it wins power in next year's election.

He made the promise at the release of the party's infrastructure, transport and housing discussion documents in Auckland this afternoon.

Bridges has proposed that if he was Prime Minister, he would spend more on new roading projects across the country, establish new transport watchdogs in Wellington and Canterbury and to create a new Water Infrastructure fund.

National also wants to introduce a new congestion tax which, it says, would manage traffic flow.

In his speech this afternoon, Bridges admitted past Governments, including National, had not done enough when it comes to infrastructure.

"We've been too conservative as a country in the past in this area."

But he said that under this Government, infrastructure funding has stalled.

He said that next year, National will unveil a full pipeline of infrastructure projects, but today it was just outlining a "sense of our ideas".

This comes after National was critical of the Government for failing to outline details of its planned $12 billion spend until next year, with Bridges calling it an election-year bribe.

Although supportive of more infrastructure investment, National has said borrowing more money to pay for it – the Government's scheme – is flawed.

Instead, National would use private capital and public-private partnerships to get the money to fund the projects.

But the centre-piece of National's transport proposal was a new set of roading projects.

In addition to completing the roads of national significance, which National began when it was in Government, it has proposed a "second generation" of roading projects.

National wants to upgrade 10 major roads to four-lane expressways across the country.

These include:

• Whangārei to Warkworth
• East West Link in Auckland
• Cambridge to Tirau
• Piarere to the foot of the Kaimai Ranges
• Tauranga to Katikati, including the Tauranga Northern Link
• Napier to Hastings
• Levin to Sanson
• Manawatū Gorge
• Christchurch to Ashburton
• Christchurch Northern Motorway: Belfast to Pegasus

National also wants to take another look at the way speed cameras operate.

"Many New Zealanders view random speed cameras as unfair and mere revenue gathering," the discussion document said.

National has proposed decreasing the use of random speed cameras, but increasing the number of speed cameras at high-risk areas.

When it comes to housing, the party has renewed its calls to repeal and replace the Resource Management Act (RMA), and to scrap KiwiBuild.

National has also thrown its support behind a rent-to-buy scheme – similar to the one proposed by the Greens.

The party also plans to introduce a dollar-for-dollar scheme with homeless shelters to either improve or expand their facilities and services.