Auckland City Rail Link: CEO on why NZ struggles to build stuff | Q+A 2024

If everything had gone to plan, Auckland's City Rail Link would be up and running by now. But instead, the biggest city's largest infrastructure project is way over the original budget, and years behind the original schedule.
Q+A speaks to outgoing City Rail Link CEO Sean Sweeney about why New Zealand seems to struggle to complete large infrastructure projects on time and on budget.
Join Jack Tame and the Q+A team and find the answers to the questions that matter. Made with the support of NZ on Air.

[samuelfielding]

This guy is on the money 100%. It’s refreshing to hear someone with knowledge and experience talk on these issues instead of clueless politicians

[timkeane]

He hit the nail on the head if there is no pipe line of works ahead of these private sector companies how can these companies retain the telent? They can not.

[timhayward]

Fantastic interview thanks Katie. The non partisan Irish approach is very interesting. Telling comments that PPP’s in Australia have ended up loading costs back on Government anyway. Infrastructure is a decision as a society to have a shared investment in the future but 40 years of neo-liberalism has destroyed our ability to even have the debate let alone come to an agreement.

[rohanbotica]

The social contract is completely gone. Even in Europe they accept that you pay tax, put up with some noise and disruption, then get a rail line, a tunnel, a bridge, a park, some affordable housing, and society benefits collectively. Here we're on a 3 year election cycle where politicians appeal to a voter base who don't want public spending and whose idea of public goods has been killed completely. If we do commit to something, it's usually a motorway, and as Sean said, we've lost the domestic capacity to deliver anything on time and on budget. It's all been privatised or pushed overseas. Bring back the Ministry of Works.

[mysteryprize]

It's a good point about how you can't just suddenly scale up and down a workforce from one project to the next. To retain workers in NZ, especially the more experienced workers, they will need reliable sources of income to pay their mortgages and support their families... Which is very difficult to do with one-off projects. Instead, they will go to the places that can give assurance of work; and as soon as someone leaves NZ, bringing them back or training a new worker from scratch becomes much more difficult. You can end up losing entire sectors of industry. I've seen it happen in areas outside of construction.

[davidk]

NZ had half the population of today when the Auckland Harbor Bridge was made. We couldn't make that today.

[aleksandriakirkland]

The construction of Britomart/Waitematā station and Aucklands eletrification went through similar politicisation and ridicule/NIMBYism to the CRL, but there's basically 0 discussion today over it being a waste of money, its pretty much a success story.

The CRL will be a repeat but with a dramatically greater success story, but everyone is focusing on the cost, disruption, and scale instead. The 50k people/hr is always mentioned, but it's never put into perspective; spaghetti junction carries just over 200k people a DAY, the CRL meets that capacity in just 4-5 bloody hours without needing to tear up entire suburbs, while ALSO providing development opportunities around or even on the stations (like the Symphony Centre going directly ontop of Te Waihorotiu station).

I can only hope that the transformation the CRL brings provides more proof of how beneficial game-changing projects like this will be, not just for what the projects themselves provide but how it allows for even more projects to bring changes NZ desperately needs.

[ralphdavidson]

Good interview the guest was aloud to answer properly good one katie

[AntoniaAllison-vd]

Top interview! Please expand on this - all kiwis need to see and understand how and why we are going backwards on our NZ infrastructure.

[pro-storm]

Imagine Spending Billions of dollars on an Express Busway to and from the City and not having buses running on it during the night so lowest paid night workers don't have access to public transport to get home when they finish at 2am in the morning

[robertmariu]

NZ used to have a public works dept to build infrastructure ; but nah, privatise everything!! Like housing !!

[Marzipan_Rocks]

Bring back Ministry of Works and have bipartisan agreement on certain projects. That would create ongoing work, a regular infrastructure investment and better quality facilities for the public.

[michaelgrey]

New Zealand in general is very shortsighted when it comes to infrastructure. I would rather have higher taxes and good infrastructure than not.

[roycefinlayson]

Excellent interview, 100% agree with Sean, development of infrastructure needs to be independent from the 3yr election cycle

[dis]

The interview everyone needs to hear. Especially journalist and government critics talking about construction without ever sitting in a work site before.

[jameslochhead]

Sounds like we need to bring back the ministry of works

[Adam-bucg]

this was actually a really good listen, I feel for what they are going through.

[CodeWech]

Hopefully NZ politician were listening to this and find a way to agree across the board things they won’t make political football with….. dreams are free I guess

[mysticmalaichicken]

If Auckland wants to be one of the top cities in the world then it must have reliable and sufficient public transport. I just came back from Europe, and it’s a relief knowing that you can land in a place and navigate it without having to get an expensive hired car.

[amraceway]

As soon as the government outsourced infrastructure projects to outside private corporations the wheels fell of the wagon. The same thing has happened in Australia. Costs escalated dramatically, training programs ceased with apprentices becoming an endangered species and delays seemed to be written into every new contract for the inevitable price adjustments. The Australian inland rail network and Snowy 2.0 are shining examples of how not to do infrastructure.