Lyttelton Port CEO Graeme Sumner
The discussion drew on an Infrastructure NZ white paper Connecting Canterbury: Strengthening Infrastructure for Growth published in partnership with Simpson Grierson.
The proposition is straightforward: stop thinking about roads, rail, ports and airports as separate assets and start treating them as an integrated network.
Canterbury may be one of the few places in New Zealand where that argument has already been tested in real life. The earthquakes forced the region to think about infrastructure, resilience and connectivity in ways that few other places have had to confront.
Now the region is being forced to consider how do you build infrastructure for growth before congestion, climate events and under-investment begin to constrain it.
Sumner pointed to Lyttelton Port’s recently announced expansion as evidence of that systems approach.
The project has not been considered simply in terms of Canterbury’s own requirements but in relation to the national shipping network.
“What’s happening in Canterbury inevitably affects the wider system,” Sumner said, arguing the consequences should be positive for New Zealand as a whole.
He said upgrades to the South Island rail network and locomotives have also created a new proposition for exporters and importers – improving speed to market, cost and emissions performance.
“I’m a strong advocate for KiwiRail. Not everybody, it seems, in the country is.”
Sumner argued what has happened in the South Island is “really, really important and quite revolutionary”.
Canterbury cannot become a more productive export economy simply by building more roads. Its future depends on the interaction between road, rail, port and airport infrastructure.
And that brings resilience into the equation.
Environment Canterbury chief executive Dr Stefanie Rixecker argued resilience must become embedded in infrastructure decision-making rather than treated as an optional extra.
Environment Canterbury chief executive Dr Stefanie Rixecker
Her experience, reinforced by a recent Infrastructure NZ delegation to the Nordic countries led her to value the Finnish concept of “total defence”.
The Finnish approach does not separate military preparedness from civil defence, transport, water infrastructure and other essential systems.
For Canterbury, Rixecker said, climate resilience is effectively “life and livelihood resilience”.
A bridge or culvert is not merely a piece of concrete and steel. It determines whether freight can move, whether children can get to school and whether people can reach medical services.
Rixecker argued for greater use of risk mapping and more investment before infrastructure fails. She also made a case for stronger regional co-ordination – building what she called the “muscle memory” of collaboration rather than waiting for emergencies to force it.
Local Government
Meager was careful not to frame the South Island’s growth as a competition with Auckland or other regions.
“I’ve been very cautious to make sure that it’s not about advocating for the South Island at the expense of other parts of the country,” he said.
But a genuinely national approach to freight and logistics inevitably creates losers as well as winners.
He acknowledged if infrastructure was planned purely from a South Island-wide or national perspective some difficult questions would have to be asked about whether all existing assets are in the right places.
Timaru provides an obvious example.
As a local MP, Meager said, he would make the strongest possible case for Timaru’s port. But viewed from a national perspective, the answer might not be so straightforward.
Every region wants its own port, airport, highway upgrade or economic development project. Local politicians understandably defend them. But a national freight system cannot be optimised if every individual asset is protected by a political veto.
Rixecker was similarly blunt about local government. New Zealand, she argued, has an extraordinarily complicated system for the size of its population.
She does not want to lose local voice. But she questions whether functions such as flood management, civil defence and biosecurity could sometimes be delivered more efficiently across larger regional groupings.
That debate becomes increasingly important as climate risk rises and infrastructure costs escalate. So does the question of how the country pays for it.
Public-private partnerships
The discussion around public-private partnerships was particularly relevant given the scale of bridge and culvert renewals facing Canterbury and the wider South Island. The idea is to bundle projects into a programme large enough to attract institutional and international capital.
Sumner said he considers that as pragmatic rather than ideological.
PPPs can work when projects are properly packaged, with private providers paid against clear availability and performance standards, he said.
Meager is equally direct: the Government is open to PPPs for major projects.
“One of the biggest costs and pains for us as decision makers, but also for you out in public, is surely the delay and how long it takes some of these projects just to get started,” he said.
If PPPs can accelerate delivery and get “spades in the ground”, that is a good outcome.
Five years on
Ask the panel what Canterbury should look like in five years and the answers converge.
Rixecker wants resilience embedded in every investment decision and regional co-ordination to become normal practice.
Sumner describes Lyttelton’s expansion as a “game changer” and a signal of confidence in Canterbury and the wider South Island. “It will service the needs of the South Island for generations to come.”
Meager had the simplest test.
Five years from now, he says, Canterbury should not still be talking about the same projects. The projects should be delivered – or be visibly in train.
Canterbury is increasingly positioning itself around advanced manufacturing, aerospace, technology, agribusiness and other high-value industries. But none of that ambition will survive if the physical infrastructure cannot keep up.
As Meager puts it, if companies are going to establish themselves in aerospace, the region needs the infrastructure to support their workers and operations.
“All the ambition and all the hope in the world is not going to make that happen unless we actually build the infrastructure for it.”
Read more stories from the Herald’s Project Canterbury special report here.