Jason Walls: Newstalk ZB Political Editor on day two of infrastructure investment summit

The jury's still out on how much foreign capital the Government's Infrastructure Investment Summit will pull in.  

More than 100 offshore entities are attending the two-day event in Auckland.  

There's already talk of public-private partnerships for prisons and roads, after day one.  

Newstalk ZB Political Editor Jason Walls, who's there, told Andrew Dickens multiple investors have expressed how keen they are to invest in our assets.  

He says for example; Italian companies have told media of their interest in the Northern Expressway extension. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It is the last day of the Investment conference, where
the government has been trying to impress foreign investors. At
the summit. We had some announcements already doing up Christ
Jorge Men's prison, maybe building some new courthouses, the Northern Expressway.
They're asking for registrations of interests. There's the Italians are
quite interested. It all wraps up today and Jason Walls

(00:22):
is covering it. Are you there?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
I am indeed. Good morning, Andrew.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
I mean, are you there at the conference?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Oh right, not quite yet. I'm heading along later this morning,
but yes, I'll be there today.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
How do you think it's going?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
You know, it's hot. I'll tell you what. It's hard
for us to kind of say. We're locked in a
little media room. I think little media room. It's actually
quite a nice media room, but we're locked in there, nonetheless,
and we can't actually get access to the delegates or
anybody on the floor of the actual venue. We have
this little TV screen that we watch everything going in from,
but we get ministers coming in fairly regularly to give

(00:58):
us little updates of how things are going. And you know,
it does seem to be going well. We've had a
couple of investors come in and tell us how keen
they are to invest in New Zealand assets. We had
the Italians come in, for example, and say that they're
keen on the Northern Expressway. So you know, it's looking
good for the government in terms of the amount of
investment they're going to receive. Chris lux And telling us

(01:19):
yesterday he's expecting all he's hoping for tens of billions
of dollars worth of investment. So we'll just have to
wait to see if the proof is in the pudding.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Absolutely, and the one thing that came out of yesterday
is that all foreign investors are worried about the pipeline
of work. They don't want to set up shop here
and then run out of work and then have to
retrench and leave the place again. And so the big
question about that is what Barbara Edmund, the Labor for
that spokesperson, is going to say today and whether she
supports a pipeline of work.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well, it's going to be interesting to see what Labour
say because they've already come out and said that they
don't support public private partnerships and places like prisons. And
that's a big deal because obviously the government wants work
to be done in those areas, and one of the
big themes in the summit is bipartisanship. In the past,
we've had so much shopping and changing of governments and

(02:12):
it means that key infrastructure projects are being green lit
and then cut, and then green lit again and then
cut and that's just not very good for business consistency.
So having labor there is good because it means that
there is some sort of semblance of consistency to say
that that both parties are going to be working together
for the long term to get these in infrastructure pipeline developed.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
All right, well, Jason, we look forward to your coverage today.
We look forward to hearing what Barbara Edmon has to say,
and let's hope something works for all of this and.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
This for more from Earlily Edition with Ryan Bridge.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
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