New Zealand is well below average of all OECD countries in providing infrastructure with congested roads, fatigued rail tracks, burst sewage pipes, polluted water supplies, failure in maths and reading in schools, broken mental health systems, woeful housing shortages, child poverty, high suicide rates due to 20 years of under-investment and the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of our politicians.
Politicians are seen to be perennially pledging to cancel out each other’s infrastructure projects. Sometimes they even cancel out their own. When the Labour-NZ First government came to power, a number of road construction projects were put on hold.
It also cancelled the existing Auckland Council light rail project in favour of its own and this has now morphed into a tunnelled light rail metro system.
National, now rising in the polls, has pledged to cancel the tunnelled metro system, similarly with housing and so it goes on.
Each of these perennial cancellations of previous government initiatives adds uncertainties and prolonged delays costing taxpayers billions, maybe even moreso with rampant inflation and must not be allowed to continue.
The solution may be in allowing the government a longer term in office, maybe as much as 10 years.
However in my view the best solution would be to pay each politician on performance in which case at least half would be gone before breakfast.
Gary Hollis
Mellons Bay
