Learning on the job: What Prime Minister Christopher Luxon learned from a day in Sydney

analyze – “We’re from New Zealand. We’re here to study.” Those are the words of Regional Development Minister Shane Jones as he arrives at Beca in Sydney.

He called himself, Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown the “main force”. Leading the group, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, said they travelled like a “singing quartet”, although there wasn’t much singing during the two-day trip. It was mostly “learning” – about infrastructure and relationships.

Beca is a New Zealand company that has expanded into the Australian market, and this is the first in a series of infrastructure-related visits by the Prime Minister’s delegation during its third visit to Australia, including a tour of a metro tunnel under construction.

Like Jones, Luxon was here to learn. In fact, he insisted on doing so and was deeply moved by the opportunity to tell anyone who would listen how much New Zealand could learn from Australia.

“We really have to do this in New Zealand … and build some modern, reliable infrastructure. That’s why we want to learn from the government how they’ve been carrying out some of their projects, which ones have gone well, which ones haven’t gone well.”

After Beca, he studied with NSW Premier Christopher Minns and then with Infrastructure NSW. Infrastructure NSW is a government agency responsible for overseeing and delivering the state’s large infrastructure projects. That means not only advising on what types of projects the government should undertake or fund, but also overseeing every stage of project delivery. That way, they can give advance warning if there are problems with delayed delivery and cost overruns. They have enabled the construction of projects such as Sydney Metro, Sydney Light Rail and the Second Sydney Harbour Tunnel.

NSW Infrastructure Council chairman Graham Bradley said they were spending more than $20 billion a year on new productive infrastructure, a level the current government has committed to achieving over the next four years.

Certainty of funding is critical to whether a project can be completed successfully. Bradley said that “stop-and-go” projects are very expensive, but certainty of funding also brings confidence to construction companies – especially foreign construction companies that want to do business in your country.

He also said they were taking some of the partisanship out of projects by publishing the business cases for projects selected by the government so the public could see the merits of the cases from the perspective of an independent organization.

Bishop told accompanying media that the government is developing an infrastructure priority list that will list credible projects that the country needs, has been independently assessed.

“If you have a list of projects that have been independently verified and infrastructure experts say ‘this is what the country … needs’, then political parties can support those projects in government or opposition.”

It’s an idea he learned from Infrastructure NSW.

“That’s what we want to do … take politics out of infrastructure,” Luxon said.

“Because we have a short political cycle and there is very little political interference, we want to make sure we can depoliticize it. Yes, there may be some conditions economically where you have to be very tight on actual spending, but what is not in dispute is the relative priority of these projects and the benefit to the country.”

Luxon says New Zealand’s balance sheet isn’t big enough to finance the infrastructure deficit. So how exactly does Luxon plan to build while spending less? Public-private partnerships.

Ms Bishop said a “National Infrastructure Agency” would be announced in the coming weeks, but said it was more about funding and financing infrastructure, particularly looking at bringing domestic and overseas capital into projects.

Luxon added: “We actually need to be able to open up to private financing and have more innovative funding and financing to be able to build projects.”

Professor John Tukey from Auckland University of Technology’s School of Future Environments said the problem with private finance was that the money ran out.

Tookey said there had been problems with the delivery of large projects in New Zealand because everything was done with a “greasy rag smell” and the result was “high expectations but very tight margins”.

“Economies of scale don’t work in New Zealand. We can invest massively, we can do massive amounts of work on a whole bunch of different projects, but our ability to raise capital is very limited.”

He knows that using private money to finance public infrastructure sounds like a good plan, but “the amount of public infrastructure needed is beyond the capacity of private financing.”

He said that while it was a useful tool, it could not be the only tool because it would not be the best value for money in every project, “and it would be quite naive to think that it would be the best value for money”.

He acknowledged Sydney had achieved a lot through its various funding models, but pointed out New Zealand had the same population as one Australian city.

“Their economies of scale don’t translate directly into New Zealand’s economies of scale. We’re still a long way from where we are elsewhere.”

Tukey also wants large projects to be shielded from electoral politics, calling for the establishment of an infrastructure investment agency that has bipartisan support but acts independently.

“In reality, we’re talking about this from a political perspective of a three-year election cycle.”

He pointed out Take Sanshui as an exampleThe coalition government has been criticised for cutting back on a range of policies implemented by the previous government, a mistake most new governments make.

“So all the infrastructure components…all the macro, high-end infrastructure projects, they take years and multiple councils to make decisions, and the rest of the projects are put on hold.

“We have a limited amount of time, especially if we’re talking about things like climate change, where we say these things are going to happen … successive governments have said this and done nothing about it.”

Luxembourg has repeatedly said he wants to get things back on track. He wants to be a prime minister who makes a difference – that’s why he came here to study.

The final stop of the day was a visit to a new metro station that was under construction. The Prime Minister, wearing high-visibility clothing and a hard hat, listened attentively to a presentation on the project and asked multiple questions. He then spent considerable time in the dusty, dirty and noisy tunnels, learning how dirt was moved to make way for the trains. It was a little difficult to hear clearly, but he listened to all the explanations.

The meaning of learning is to put what you learn into practice and translate that knowledge into decisions and actions. Luxon, who is now in the third quarter of his first year in government, will debate the many initiatives the government has already implemented.

But when it comes to large infrastructure projects, the best chance of achieving goals and leaving a long-lasting legacy is to start and fully fund a series of efforts that will continue after their tenure ends.