Marcus Beveridge: Queen City Law Managing Director on the potential for Singapore to invest in New Zealand's infrastructure

Singapore has its eye on New Zealand as the place to invest. 

This is the message that has been relayed by Minister Shane Jones, who's just returned from a visit to the wealthy city state. 

He says Singapore is keen to invest in infrastructure, including the government’s planned road building programme and water infrastructure. 

Queen City Law managing director Marcus Beveridge told Mike Hosking Singaporeans are already big players in commercial property here. 

He says getting them to invest into infrastructure is a good idea, but he's not confident it can be pulled off. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now from the Good Ideas Department. The suggestion over the
weekend from Shane Jones, no less that Singapore wants in
on some of our foreign investment for infrastructure. We want
their money, they want our food security. Seems simple. Queen
City Laws. Marcus Beveridge specializes in foreign investment, and he's
well this Marcus, morning to you morning.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Make has it hang very well?

Speaker 1 (00:18):
I was a little bit surprised about all of this,
and I thought we were close with Singapore. They're an
entrepreneurial sort of city. They've got to carve out with
a foreign investment. I would have thought we'd be into
this already, sort of floated as a new idea. Seems
weird to me.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Well, what about the exquisite irony of Shane and Winston
out there promoting this when near the sort of reds
under your beds and Japanese submarines and the harbor guys.
I mean, look, fantastic guy there. The Singaporeans have been
big players in our commercial property market for a long time,
but getting them to invest into our infrastructure is a

(00:52):
novel and really good idea. But whether we can pull
it off or not, I'm not so sure.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
What would do some well.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Thirty years ago we tried to get to Maussak, the
investment arm of their government, to invest in an internationally
important Taupo, which sounded like a great idea at the time,
but it didn't really happen. I think the problem is
reputationally at the moment, despite our regulatory framework being probably
considered attractive, we're not seen as a positive jurisdiction to

(01:28):
invest in at the moment.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Wouldn't that be changing given that Peters is out there
every second day beating the drama and Luxin is not
far behind him.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Our hats off to Winston for doing that. But I
think we're sort of seen as the lawless West at
the moment. There's not so much the Aussie criminals. It's
probably more the Kiwi criminals. We've we've also with immigration,
we've damaged some relationships there. We had a client who
has two hundred and fifty million dollars worth of hotels here,
employees five hundred Kiwis and just he was decked around

(02:01):
by our bureaucrats and Wellington and pulled the plug. So,
I mean, it's a great idea they've got. I was
trying to work out what their investment fund is it
actually equates for about five hundred thousand million New Zealand dollars,
But they're shrewd investors and I don't know. I mean,
if you look at the underground railway, it should have

(02:24):
taken two years and cost two billion dollars and it's
sort of ten years later and getting close to ten billion.
I think, Leekon you would be turning in his grave. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
No, that's a very good point. So what you're saying
is one you need to get across the hurdle reputational damage.
If you get across that hurdle, you then put your
money into the country to watch watch a bunch of
road cones hold up everything and blow out at twice
the price. So we've got to fix that as well well.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Set I mean, that's it. And yeah, so that whole
governance around projects and how we get stuff done efficiently, Yeah,
it's a you know, they're not stupid and so there's
a real politic thing to deal with there. But the
idea that Shane Jones has is a great idea.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yes, it is all right, Marcus, appreciate the insight. We'll
talk to the Prime Minister about it shortly. Marcus Beverage,
who's with Queen City Law? Mike, you didn't answer the
question how's it hanging, It's hanging as it always does.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
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