We need low-carbon infrastructure. How can we build it ASAP?

Elections have been about government’s capacity to build for a long time. Before she became PM, Jacinda Ardern grilled Bill English about his Government’s inability to deliver Auckland light rail until the 2040s. She said:

If light rail is "a good idea", as he said on Sunday, why is it not a good idea until 2047, by which time Auckland's population will have grown by an estimated 700,000?

She wanted better. In the 2017 election, she won on a platform that promised Auckland light rail within a decade. Seven years later, construction must be nearly finished, right?

Wrong.

Ardern’s government spent three years investigating different options for light rail. NZ First axed that work at the last second. When Labour won a majority in 2020, the green light was given to light rail. Yet, it took two more years to choose a plan. That plan was four times more expensive than first estimated and wouldn’t be finished until 2031 at the earliest. When Labour lost power, no construction had started. Luxon killed it.

In the 1970s, Aotearoa built dams which are crucial in our fight against climate change. Now, we create loads of plans and can’t deliver it within a leader’s political lifetime. Infrastructure has been made impossible to build.

Climate change requires an insane amount of building to protect what we have. We need train lines, bus routes, sea walls, drains, marshlands, solar panels, wind farms, charging stations, apartments, and more. Switching away from polluting machinery like petrol cars requires lots of low pollution infrastructure. Hundreds of rail lines and bus lanes sort of lots. 

The last Labour Government had fantastic plans for a low-carbon future. The problem is: progressives don’t get elected if they can’t deliver those plans. Regular people hate change and the longer you draw out consultation and construction purgatory, the less they see the benefits and the more likely they vote you out. The real question for progressives in the 21st Century is “how do we build things fast?”

It turns out, that problem was solved in the 20th Century through the Ministry of Works: the government’s in-house leader in building infrastructure. They built our dams, roads, railways, and power stations. Most of the foundational infrastructure in New Zealand was designed and constructed by employees of the Ministry of Works.

This was the model until the 1980s and 90s. Leaders of that era believed that profit-seeking private companies could work more efficiently. The Ministry of Works was sold off. Instead of having technical expertise and directly hiring teams to build, the government now tendered projects to be run entirely by private companies.

That… hasn’t worked out so well. Researchers estimate that costs are approximately 12% higher because private companies, unlike Government, need to profit. If we had private companies delivering things like the Channel Tunnel, maybe I'd feel differently. That was consented in 1986 and opened eight years later. Meanwhile, Transmission Gully was over budget and two years late.

Plus, depending on outside expertise means Government has far less institutional knowledge. A vicious cycle has taken hold: our Ministries don’t know how to achieve big policy ideas, so expensive consultants come in to provide expertise. Their ideas are then delivered by completely different companies trying to make a profit. Because there’s no collaborative approach, it takes forever and is scrapped when power changes hands. When projects are scrapped, anyone in Government who has learnt about the process might leave… likely for those consulting and construction firms. There’s a reason PwC and other firms build office blocks by the Beehive.

The government needs to deliver infrastructure like it did in the 20th Century. Private companies haven’t delivered like the Ministry of Works did.

So let’s make a new Ministry of Green Works.

A Ministry of Green Works would be made to build low-pollution infrastructure fast. Within this Ministry, everything Government needs to deliver would be done by permanently employed experts in design, construction, and planning.

Public servants would collaborate closely to deliver housing fit for a warmer world and infrastructure to reduce our pollution. Time and money would be saved by having designers working closely with builders. Mistakes would be avoided and projects would be delivered faster.

The Ministry would employ the brightest minds and use their skills. Experts would be empowered to quickly deliver community improvements. The Ministry would be focused on building low-carbon projects at pace, not exploring ideas without follow-through. Our brightest school-leavers would have good paying jobs as apprentices. Their passion would be put towards improving Aotearoa. This is better than what we currently incentivise them to do: write reports that are never used.

This modern-day Ministry would also do things differently, like not blatantly stealing Māori land. Our government’s history is tainted with billions of dollars of land stolen from Māori. This time, government would have partnerships with iwi and hapū to help finance things like Māori housing.

Some may wonder whether it’s possible for the government to have expertise in delivery. The status quo has been built to make government excellence seem impossible. But it is possible.

Have you ever seen Downer Construction at a work-site? Downer is literally the Ministry of Works. When the Government sold off the Ministry, all the building expertise and equipment were sold to a company called Downer. It’s doing the same work, now for a profit.

The Ministry’s planning minds were sold off into a company that is now called WSP: consultants that make money on planning work our Government used to do itself. Public servants can do this work, and deliver it too.

Solving climate change takes more than recycling. It takes pooling our resources to build the better future we need. Government is a democratic way to do that, and it’s managed to build at scale before. Restoring that capability quickly is more important than ever.

Progressive people need a plan to revitalise the government’s ability to do things. Jacinda Ardern was right to be pissed off that one light rail line would take 30 years. It doesn’t have to be this way. A Ministry of Green Works could be the necessary tool to deliver an abundance of infrastructure and improve people’s lives. With that capability, climate change would get a whole lot simpler.