Last weekend I sat down at my desk to send out a few invoices when my son asked if I would take him and his mates to a tag tournament in Papakura.
I sighed knowing that would take me out for the day. No invoices. No pay. Then I said, “Sure, mate”. So we set off. Google Maps told me 29 minutes to Papakura but warned traffic was heavy. Heavy?
Try impossible. For the next two hours on a Saturday afternoon I dodged, ducked and weaved my way down the motorway. And that was without any incidents. My bad – I should have said no but I didn’t. It was what it was.
But this was early Saturday afternoon. It now seems Auckland’s rush “hour” starts daily at 5am and ends around 7.30pm. One big event in the city and we come to a standstill. One crash, same result. Rain, we panic.
Ahead of us were cars and brake lights, cars and queues, more cars than I have ever seen.
It’s true that several events were happening in the city, but I’d just driven into car-chaos central with no escape route.
In 2023 New Zealand allowed in more people than ever before.
There was a record gain of 126,000 – 173,000 non-New Zealand arrivals versus 45,000 Kiwis leaving. That used to be called a brain drain.
But drain indicates emptying the country of its people. Now the opposite is true. And we are really (really) feeling it. As, I suspect, are those who have arrived to make NZ home.
This is happening because in the past 15 years alone we have added 1 million people to our population. About 20% of the population have arrived in the space of a decade and a half. It took 170 years to hit 4 million and just 15 years for the last million.
To be clear, I don’t blame the people who arrive here from elsewhere. We are all children of immigrants whose ancestors came seeking a better life. Many new arrivals to a country work day and night, seven days a week to secure that better future.
The responsibility for the infrastructure mess we’re in lies with those who allowed this rapid growth without any kind of co-ordinated public-policy debate, without our critical planners and thinkers being in the same room.
We need to talk about growth
Imagine having a policy that adds 1 million people to our population every 15 years.
That level of population growth would cause a massive reaction and a much-needed conversation about the consequences, including how to maintain living standards and public services.
But we have had silence from those responsible for our population explosion. Distinguished academics such as professors Paul Spoonley and Peter Davis have spoken out, rightly saying that such rapid expansion has widespread public-policy implications that researchers and experts might have expected to have a seat at the table.
But there’s no evidence of such foresight. So who will say, “That was my job, I resign”? Sadly that takes courage, and those in charge of this mess have long since left or are hiding in a council rabbit warren.
We desperately needed a population debate 15 years ago. Now it’s almost too late – acutely needed as it is. What we now have are unmitigated disasters all over the country. Auckland has become a city where a crucial bridge is closed when the wind whips up but there’s no plan for a second harbour crossing.
Queues are longer, it’s harder to do anything, roads haven’t been widened, classrooms haven’t been built, a second airport hasn’t been considered, our waterways are often too dirty to swim in and an ancient sewerage system means in summer the beaches are often closed. The most basic infrastructure has been left to rot and as we play catch-up we’re falling further behind.
You see it all over the country. Ongoing road works in the Bay of Plenty delay – massively – those trying to get in and out of Tauranga. Who knows what’s ahead for the Cook Strait ferries, surely a tourism mainstay? In Canterbury, students at Rolleston College have told the Ministry of Education they’re having classes in corridors.
We need more hospitals, more cops, more teachers. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we need to look at alternative ideas to the status quo – consider all options – and put in place plans fit to last no matter who is in government.
Our lives are not getting better – quality of life is declining. A series of well-meaning wellbeing budgets is pointless if nothing is built and your travel time to work doubles. It means less rest, less leisure, less time with your kids. Tell me how that increases wellbeing?
We have been monumentally let down by those in charge of our collective future and those who are paid to plan for it. We’ve been let down by city councillors who spend rates on pet projects but not on the pipes carrying our collective waste. We’ve been let down by the major political parties who play politics and cancel billions of dollars of work on roads, ferries and associated public projects because it’s not their idea.
That equals a pile of dosh spent for … nothing.
There’s no accountability – something that seems to have gone missing alongside the cash and the outcomes. This new National-led government needs to stop partying at the graveside being dug for news journalism and the dedicated professionals now wondering how to secure their futures.
It needs to start building things that will make a difference.
It’s easy to slam the door on Labour’s plans but the cost is more than just the wasted billions. It’s a wasted six years.
And for us onlookers it’s decades of disbelief at the dismal lack of outcomes and dismay that those in charge get away with doing diddly-squat.
