Andrew Dickens: Are Labour serious about infrastructure investment?

So, Barbara Edmonds is in front of the investment conference today, representing the Labour Party who may or may not be in charge of the Treasury benches in the future. 

The conference will be waiting to see if Labour is on the infrastructure bus. If they will support the projects the National-led government are into, and if they’re on board with foreign investment in our infrastructure plans  

It’s actually the critical address of the weekend.

Yesterday we heard that the big concern is the pipeline of work.  

Overseas investors don’t want to set up shop in New Zealand for a project only to find we back out, leaving them with a big investment and nowhere to go.  

To be fair, National has done it with the cancellation of big projects like the ferries.  

Labour also did it with a moratorium on road development.

It’s time for a bipartisan accord on what we need to do, but that will be hard to find as our parties have used infrastructure as a way to differentiate between themselves.

That’s dumb. 

For instance, roads are neither left wing or right wing.  

Labour’s anti-road sentiment has been based on faulty logic. Somehow, they think building roads means more emissions.  

Which is ridiculous, it means the same emissions on bad roads. In fact, it means more emissions as traffic gets stalled.  

A good road is an efficient road, and an efficient road helps with both emissions and productivity.  

So, all eyes on Barbara to see if she’s logical or ideologically driven. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So Barbara Edmunds from the Labor Party, the Finance spokesperson,
is in front of the Investment Conference today representing the
Labor Party who may or may not be in charge
of Treasury benches in the future. Now the conference will
be waiting to see if Labor is on the infrastructure bus,
if they will support the projects the National League government
are into and proposing right now, and if they are

(00:20):
on board with foreign investments in our infrastructure plans. Barbara's
is actually the critical address of the weekend because yesterday
we heard the big concern is pipelines, the pipelines of
work overseas. Investors don't want to set up shop in
New Zealand for a project only to find that we
back out later and there's no more work for them,
leaving them with a big investment and nowhere to go.

(00:41):
And to be fair, National has done that with the
cancelation of big projects like the ferries. Labor also did
it with a moratorium on road development. So look, it
is time for a bipartisan accord on what we need
to do in this country. But that will be hard
to find as our parties have used infrastructure as a
way to differentiate between themselves and that's done. For instance,
roads are neither left wing nor right wing. Labour's anti

(01:05):
road sentiment has been based on faulty logic. Somehow they
think that building roads means more missions, which is ridiculous.
It means the same emissions but on bad roads. In fact,
it means more emissions as traffic gets stalled. A good
road is an efficient road, and an efficient road helps
with both emissions and productivity. And I wonder whether the

(01:28):
Labor Party sees this. So today all eyes on Barbara
to see if she's logical or ideological. For more fam
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