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.