Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Nick Leggett: Infrastructure NZ CEO on the Infrastructure Commission gaining oversight over major projects

Transcript

Nick Leggett: Infrastructure NZ CEO on the Infrastructure Commission gaining oversight over major projects · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Is Nick Leggett now Infrastructure New Zealand CEO. Because big
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: change is on the way to how we do infrastructure
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: oversight of the big mega projects, the billion dollar mega
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: projects Treasury is out, the Infrastructure Commission is in Nick
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Legget's here this morning. Get a Nick.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Well, you make it sound very interesting, Ryan, It is
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: interesting to those of us that follow infrastructure and that
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: it's not a big bang reform. It's one of those
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: really important, thoughtful changes that Chris Bishop has done over
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: time in his in his tenure as Minister for Infrastructure,
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: And as you say, it takes the assurance function. So
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: why are we building these big projects? But more importantly
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: how we're building them? Are they are they's Crown funded
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: projects done right? Do they have the right business cases?
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Is the advice to ministers what they need? And I
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: was at the Infrastructure Commission symposium is today where Chris
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Bishop announced this and he said that ministers could get
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: thousands of pages, but it doesn't actually tell of information.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: But that doesn't actually tell them what they need to know.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: So the Infrastructure Commission has been around now for five years.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: It's done a lot of a lot of assessments of
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: our infrastructure challenges, that gap we've got between what we
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: need and how much we invest. It's now got some
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: real teeth that's going to be able to assess.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: The pr sounds great, But why are we to trust
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Boffins at a new infrastructure Commission if we can't trust
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: them at Treasury. I mean it, Boffin's not just Boffins.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Well, if you think about it, the clues in the
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: name right Infrastructure Commission. Its focus is on infrastructure, maintaining
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: what we've already got and the expertise that they've built
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: up there across infrastructure and understanding what New Zealand needs
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: from it. Now, we pay too much for infrastructure. The
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: value we get from every dollar we spend isn't about
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: the bottom ten percent of the world, which is horrific
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: when you think about it. Because we're a small country.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: We spend enough, but we don't have an efficient spend
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: and that is partly because we of every part of
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: the infrastructure process, and it starts with the people that decide,
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: you know, what we're going to build and how much
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: we're going to spend and how we're going to find
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: it. And that's you know, those people across government. So This
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: is really significant. It's a long term sort of drive
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: to get a better result from how much we spend
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: and what we spend it on.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: All right, Nick Legget Infrastruction, Zel and CE eight.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, Listen live
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: to News Talk Set being from five am weekdays, or
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.