August - September 2020 The construction industry stands to lose a huge amount of skilled workers
Political rabbits put in charge of the lettuce A combined plea from three key infrastructure associations garners a partial response from a government accused of using shovel-ready projects for politicking ahead of the election
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etails of 59 projects were released on July 27 by the government’s Infrastructure Reference Group after infrastructure industry leaders and opposition party MPs had earlier called for the release of the government’s full list of shovel-ready projects. “Increasing numbers of
workers face redundancy and business confidence amongst construction and infrastructure companies nose-dives,” the joint communique from Infrastructure NZ, Civil Contractors NZ and the Association of Consulting and Engineering NZ said. Early in July the Government had announced it had
selected 150 projects worth $2.6b that would create or retain 20,000 jobs. It also indicated that it was looking to spend $464 million housing and urban development, $460 million on the environmental, $670 million on community and social development and $708m on transport projects.
But four weeks later, only projects worth about $500m (approximately 25 per cent of the total allocated) had been released. A package including $761m of three waters funding had also been announced, but without any timelines. As details of a further dozen or so trickled out during the month News-
Where the money is going • Auckland: $500 million • Canterbury: $300 million • Otago: $260 million • Wellington: $185 million • Bay of Plenty: $170 million • Waikato: $150 million • Northland: $150 million • Manawatū/Whanganui: $140 million 48
infrastructurenews.co.nz
• Hawkes Bay: $130 million • Southland: $90 million • West Coast: $90 million • East Coast: $106 million • Taranaki: $85 million • Top of the South Island: $85 million Source: Newsroom
