Jason Walls: Newstalk ZB political editor ahead of the Government's Infrastructure Investment Summit

Delegates from some of the world's largest banks and investment firms have arrived in Auckland for the Government's first Infrastructure Investment Summit.

Cabinet Ministers are expected to front a raft of sessions over the next two days - and it's believed a series of announcements will be delivered regarding New Zealand's future.

Newstalk ZB political editor Jason Walls is set to be at tomorrow's big conference - and he suspects a 'smorgasbord' of big political names will have something to say.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And Ryan Bridge.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
The government's much talked about Infrastructure Investment Summit begins tomorrow.
Chris Luxon obviously has been hyping this up, the possibility
for overseas investors to help pay for some of our infrastructure.
Jason Walls is News Talks political editor. He's going to
be at the conference. Jason, Good evening, Good evening, rayn
Now run me through what what's the rundown tomorrow? What's

(00:23):
actually happening?

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Oh listen, mate, You take a diet, you throw it
at a corkboard that has a photo of a minister
on it, and likely you hit somebody that's speaking tomorrow.
There is just all of them that are taking to
the stage to talk to the investors about various different
parts of their portfolio. Obviously it's the Prime Minister who's
opening the conference, and then you've got Nikola Willis. And
then afterwards, as I said, it's a bit of a

(00:45):
schmugasport really of the who's who's every minister and their dogs,
Simeon Brown, Tama Port Tucker, You've got Ericus Stamford, just
to name a few. So I don't actually know who's
going to be left in Parliament tomorrow. I mean, my
colleagues are going to be keeping an eye on the house,
but there's going to be nobody there.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
It sounds like it. Do we know whether any of
the e we are presenting, for example, or any other
New Zealand businesses or outfits or is it just government like?
Is it exclusively government ministers?

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Well, I mean we only get the sort of what's
happening with the government and the ministerial agenda here. There
may well be various different presentations from others, but the
agenda or the number of companies, I mean, there's one
hundred that are coming, forty seven of them are from
New Zealand. So I talked to Chris Bishop today and
I said, we'll hang on a second. This doesn't really
sound like an international conference. And he said, well, the

(01:37):
point is you want to get about half New Zealand
half overseas in the room to be able to have
these conversations. So it's the government that's facilitating it. They're
the one that's up there talking about the various different
projects that they want funding for. But these are the
delegates in the room that could be talking to each other,
and the government wants to facilitate some of that capital flow.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Now, obviously we can't, we shouldn't say where it's been held,
but the government did say that it was oversubscribed. Remember
when they came out and said it's oversubscribed and there's
one hundred people. I'd like to know how many people
the venue holds, you know, how oversubscribed was it?

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah, well I talked to it, as I said, I
talked to Chris Bishop again today and he said it
was the hottest ticket in town and he had quite
a few people actually lining up four tickets. I don't
mean think he meant literally lining up, but it's yeah,
it's somewhere in Auckland, right. I wish I could tell you.
I'm going along tomorrow and I'm just going to look
at an email and type that into the uber address
and hopefully I get there. It is somewhere in Auckland,

(02:34):
and I'm pretty sure they'll be able to handle. I
think it's about one hundred people or one hundred companies
that are represented. There'll be more people than that there.
I would say they'd probably be closer to five hundred
to seven hundred and fifty.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
All up, Okay, interesting stuff, Jason, Thank you very much
for that. I'm sure we'll hear more from you on
News Talks. It be tomorrow Jason WAW's News Talks, it
be political Iditate.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
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Speaker 2 (02:58):
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