Decades of dodgy planning are to blame for Transport Gully motorway issues and the eyebrow-raising cost of Auckland's light rail Transport Minister Michael Wood told Q+A.
Wood told Jack Tame that, right now, the Government is playing catch-up, developing transport infrastructure that should have been built years ago.
"In terms of the bigger question.
"What I would say is that we went through a period through the 1980s, 90s and early 2000s where we just were not building sufficient infrastructure for our country.
"We've got a record amount going into infrastructure, and we're building up the capacity to be able to deliver not just the catch-up, but actually planning and future-proofing for the growth that we know is coming at us very fast over the next 20 to 30 years."
He pointed to the cost of Auckland's $14 billion dollar Light Rail as an example of the painful lessons learnt.
"It's a significant amount of money. But... this is the kind of infrastructure we should've built 50 years ago.
"We've got a choice in front of us now.
"Do we finally make these investments and have proper linked-up public transport systems?
"Or do we kick the can down the road again and see the problems around congestion, urban sprawl and lack of transport choices get worse?
However, he dismissed Treasury estimates that the project's actual price tag could end up anywhere between $7.3 to $29.2 billion dollars.
"The Treasury figures you've quoted are effectively just taking that figure and saying, well, because it's at an early stage, maybe it'll be cheaper, and maybe it'll be more expensive, and they've halved it and doubled it.
"But actually, what I'm quoting are figures that... have been budgeted very conservatively.
"This will be a 100-year sort of level of infrastructure. This will be used by our great-grandkids.
"We think that it's time to bite the bullet."
But finding the money to roll out the tarmac brings its own problems.
The 90-day delay in completing Wellington's Transmission Gully motorway, was partly due to the "excruciating" negotiations required to fund the $1.25 billion dollar project under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP), he said.
READ MORE: Transmission Gully – does it save Wellington commuters time?
"The way the PPP was structured is that you have a range of different parties in the room, each of whom have different commercial interests.
"To make any changes or make progress, you often have to go through excruciating legal and commercial negotiations.
"Some of the problems with the PPP that have been well-canvassed, and lessons need to be learned from that."
When quizzed on complaints levelled at the motorway, including loose gravel and mobile reception dead spots. Wood said New Zealand faces a shortage of expertise due to the decades of dearth in the sector.
"That has clearly had an impact.
"You look at some of the really significant projects that we're moving forward with, we do have to draw very heavily on overseas expertise for some of the more complex projects.
"Ideally, you would have a whole construction sector ecosystem in New Zealand that was really enabled to do those things.
"Now, don't get me wrong — we've got very skilled people, excellent companies who are able to engage in these projects.
"[But] even for core labour supply, we're often very reliant on offshore labour for that.
"We need to build up a steady pipeline, and that's one of the things that the sector has said for us so that we can retain the skills here."
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