The South Island is pinging on the electoral radar screen

The National Party turned up with an extensive and expensive list of projects it intended to build in the South Island. The Labour Party turned up with downcast faces to dismiss those plans as pork barrel politics. But at least they both turned up in Christchurch on Friday — as did the Greens, Act New Zealand, New Zealand First and Opportunity — to debate the place of the South Island in the overall scheme of things. The conference, the first of its kind, was organised by the combined southern business chambers. Collectively, they issued a “policy platform”, which asked parties to commit to South Island GDP reaching at least $130,000 per capita by 2035, and for it to be sitting “clearly above” the national average. While no party signed on the bottom line for that, all were equally bullish about the South Island’s prospects. “We’ve got a comprehensive plan for the South Island,” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said. “That’s what we came here today to do. We’re the only party to do that and I don’t think you can doubt at all our deep, deep commitment to the South Island. “We have a dedicated minister, we have a comprehensive plan, we know it’s a driver of growth in this country and there’s a lot we’re going to continue to support with it.” Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the recently-released Infrastructure Commission report should be the blueprint for development in the South Island. “What we’re not going to do is pork barrel politics based on infrastructure investment. The National Party has a great track record of producing very glossy, detailed infrastructure investment plans for an election campaign that they then completely abandon when they get into government. They did the same thing three years ago with their Roads of National Significance,” Mr Hipkins said. “We actually have to have a long-term, stable pipeline of work. That’s what Labour is committed to, rather than just suddenly discovering a desire to invest in particular projects because there’s an election campaign around the corner.” Specifics in the National Party plan included making public transport funding available for Queenstown gondola proposals through the the National Land Transport Fund, development of a new Government Policy Statement on mining and extraction under the fast-track, and new energy supply requirement for data centre projects. NZ First Taieri list MP Mark Patterson praised any plans for further investment in the South. “The South Island chambers are absolutely correct that money has been sucked out of the South Island and paid for massive projects in the North Island, where the real growth is happening down here,” he said. “We have to get investment to where the opportunities are. They are absolutely in the South Island. For New Zealand First, it’s in our DNA, regional development. Every time we’ve got into government, we have used that opportunity to leverage our political capital for regional development with a $3 billion production growth fund, and a $1.2b regional infrastructure fund.” Act New Zealand leader David Seymour highlighted reform of the Resource Management Law as key to further boosting the southern economy. “That is by far the biggest handbrake, because the great advantage as a country is the land and resources we have, but we’ve made it almost impossible to use them. That has made us much poorer.” Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick highlighted the South’s potential for electricity generation and the role it could play in her party’s plans to decarbonise the economy. “That will obviously reduce the cost of living for New Zealanders, for your customers, but make it easier to create and retain jobs and manufacturing and production here in New Zealand, so that we have that very resilience. “We also can increase and grow our productive capacity through meaningful investment in our infrastructure, in our education, in our healthcare system, and in housing.” Opportunity Party leader Qiulae Wong said big changes would be needed to achieve the chambers goal of increasing GDP per capita. “That requires investment and innovation,” she said. “We also need much more stable and long-term thinking about how we plan and fund infrastructure across the country, but particularly around here, and working with local councils to deliver that. “We can’t achieve these big things if we keep reversing each other’s work and spending more time point scoring rather than focusing on the job ahead.” mike.houlahan@odt.co.nz

The South Island is pinging on the electoral radar screen

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