The infrastructure minister wants more private sector financing, such as public-private partnerships (PPPs), to pay for major projects.
In a speech to Local government New Zealand on Thursday night, Chris Bishop said he wanted government grant funding to become a last resort for councils.
"Infrastructure has to be paid for and at the moment, it’s largely paid for by the Crown - which is taxpayers - or it’s paid for by ratepayers. And what we’re saying is that user-pays has a role to play here as well. Things like water metres, things like congestion pricing in our major cities and things like toll roads.
*won’t buy our way out, despite the government being able to borrow at far lower rates than anyone else.
Tolls for new roads are whatever, the RoNs are an enormous waste of money anyway. Let the car-brained idiots who want them pay for them.
PPPs are just a scam for the government to pretend like they’re saving money by moving the cost to a different budget line item so they don’t show up as government debt. They cost far more in the long run, look at Transmission Gully.
Is our current model, with funding through petrol tax and road user changes, not already a user-pays model?
All the big roading announcements that National campaigned on were planned to be funded via the National Land Transport Fund, that gets it’s money from road user charges and petrol tax.
Does it sound to you like he’s got two things confused - PPP with commercial interests (hello Chinese funding) and user pays as the same thing?
I suspect the tolls are a necessary part of the partnership. In other countries, you get things like having a company fund the development in return for being able to collect tolls for 10 years (for example). If you didn’t have tolls, how would the company get their money back from the investment? And if that money comes from the government, they might as well have just paid for it with taxpayer dollars to start with.
So I get why tolls are needed. But now you’re just charging people twice to use the road.
I would argue that if you put a toll on an existing road you are charging people twice, but not if its on a new one. It’s a great thing for things like the northern expressway.
My big thing is why even get private involved? If there’s profit to be made keep it - country’s running out of money and productive assets, use it.
