Michelle McCormick: Infrastructure New Zealand Policy Director on the extra money allocated to infrastructure in Budget 2025

The Government's scraped the bottom of the barrel to find more money for the upcoming Budget. 

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon's promising an extra $400 million for maintaining and upgrading assets, on top of the already projected $3.6 billion. 

He says he wants to prioritise growing the economy. 

Infrastructure New Zealand Policy Director Michelle McCormick told Mike Hosking things are looking up after the investment summit earlier this year. 

She says things are happening in the background, including creating a more positive investment environment. 

McCormick says that while it's breadcrumbs, it's positive news. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's a bit more insight from the PM yesterday. In

(00:02):
the budget there's going to be an extra four hundred
million dollars per maintaining upgrading assets. That, by the way,
is on top of the already budgeted four three point
six billion. Michelle McCormick is policy director at the Infrastructure
New Zealand. Back with us, Michelle, good morning, Good morning line.
I think we've got to be a little bit honest.
Four hundred million dollars. Although it sounds a lot of money,
isn't a lot of money in infrastructure? Is that this
is just a small top up.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah, it's a bit of a bread crumb really, but
I mean good news. It is some positive news. They
had managed to strake the barrel and find a little
bit more. And we know we've got a huge infrastructure
differit but you're right, four hundred million and then that's
like half a men or two gorge replacement.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Exactally, what's the balance at the moment the stuff we
could should do versus what we are because we've got
no dough.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah, there's a big hole here. We've heard over the
last few weeks a few announcements we've had the Transport
announcements around the Northland Expressway, Mill Road in the Northwest Busway,
and a lot also with defense and the National Instructure
Plan for the health sector. But yeah, we were a
little light on detail. I think the private sector sourcing

(01:09):
of funding and other partnerships both local government and EWE
Maori are going to be very important in terms of
going forward.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Glad you raise that. That's what I want to know,
And I was just wondering if I was asleep at
the wheel, I'm not hearing any of that. Where are
these people with all their money and all these deals,
where are they? Do? You know what's happening?

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Well, the investment summits held in March was very successful
and we had definitely had some positive soundings out of that.
There is a lot of backroom discussions at the moment
and we have heard that Ruakura Port Development has had
an extra one billion dollars invested in the Prime Minister
announced yesterday. So things are happening in the background. We're

(01:48):
setting up the conditions for a more positive investment environment,
including opening ourselves up to more market lead proposals and initiatives,
and some Mundy also having gone in to invest in
new Zealand to really have our shop frontage the actors,
the contige servers for New Zealand. For those investors, well.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Let's hope we get more details of the budget. Apreciated
very much Michelle the Cormack, which of course is why
we have budgets otherwise that just announced it on the day.
She's the policy director at the Infrastructure New Zealand. The speech,
by the way, was quite a good one. I watched
it live and these are the numbers we need to
get out more often. His argument was it's not new,
but his argument was can we borrow more? Of course
we can. Would that be a nice little sugar hit,

(02:29):
Yes it would. Would that be good for the government
and the poll's fantastic? Bring it on, except we can't.
And what the last government did was add another sixty
thousand dollars of debt to each and every single household
in this country. From where they started to where they ended,
they added sixty thousand dollars of debt to every single

(02:49):
household in this country. And if you think you can
live like that, you're dreaming for more. From the Mike
asking Breakfast, listen live to news talks, it'd be from
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