Glaring Omission of Ports in Major Infrastructure Report

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand (MUNZ) is wel­com­ing the release of the New Zealand Infra­struc­ture Commission’s new report, Nation Build­ing: A Cen­tu­ry and a Half of Infra­struc­ture Invest­ment in New Zealand, but says it has a glar­ing omis­sion by ignor­ing the coun­try’s ports and mar­itime sec­tor.

MUNZ Nation­al Sec­re­tary Carl Find­lay says while the overview of infra­struc­ture invest­ment is valu­able, it is incom­plete with­out con­sid­er­ing assets that han­dle near­ly all of the coun­try’s inter­na­tion­al trade.

“Nation build­ing must include the infra­struc­ture that con­nects our island nation to the world and to itself,” says Mr. Find­lay.

“Since the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, our ports have been our pri­ma­ry eco­nom­ic gate­ways, along with the ship­ping that ser­vices them.”

Ports are New Zealand’s eco­nom­ic life­line, with 99.8% of exports and 99.6% of imports by vol­ume mov­ing through them in 2024.

MUNZ argues that ports are the linch­pin of a suc­cess­ful trans­port pol­i­cy.

The Union is advo­cat­ing for a Nation­al Ports and Coastal Ship­ping Strat­e­gy to end the “point­less com­pe­ti­tion” between ports, which leads to mis­al­lo­ca­tion of cap­i­tal, dupli­ca­tion of infra­struc­ture, and gives undue mar­ket pow­er to inter­na­tion­al ship­ping lines.

“Our cur­rent port sys­tem encour­ages waste­ful spend­ing and leaves our regions vul­ner­a­ble. A coor­di­nat­ed ‘hub and spoke’ port mod­el, would cre­ate mas­sive effi­cien­cies, enable bet­ter infra­struc­ture plan­ning, and real­ize the poten­tial of coastal ship­ping,” says Mr. Find­lay.

MUN­Z’s sub­mis­sion to the cur­rent Par­lia­men­tary Inquiry into the ports and mar­itime sec­tor out­lined how a hub-and-spoke sys­tem would con­nect inter­na­tion­al hub ports to region­al ports via a revi­talised New Zealand flagged and crewed coastal ship­ping fleet.

This would reduce con­ges­tion and main­te­nance costs on road net­works, low­er green­house gas emis­sions, cre­ate skilled local jobs on the coast and in region­al ports and improve the resilience of our nation­al sup­ply chains in emer­gen­cies.

“A coor­di­nat­ed nation­al ports strat­e­gy, sup­port­ing coastal ship­ping, is the sin­gle biggest trans­port infra­struc­ture oppor­tu­ni­ty for New Zealand,” says Mr. Find­lay.

The Mar­itime Union is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment and the Infra­struc­ture Com­mis­sion to recog­nise ports and coastal ship­ping as crit­i­cal strate­gic infra­struc­ture and inte­grate them into the upcom­ing Nation­al Infra­struc­ture Plan.