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'We can't buy our way out ' Chris Bishop on infrastructure funding and user-pays (www.rnz.co.nz)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

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.

Yes I guess that's true to some extent. But I don't really get why we need three separate user pays systems.

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.

Because the parties have nothing to gain from making the country money, but there may be some nice donations coming their way if they make money for some private companies.