Photograph: Kerry Marshall/The Guardian
After months of extreme weather that tore through New Zealand’s road, power and communications networks, the government has pledged a large, rapid funding boost to adapt infrastructure for the climate crisis, including an expansion of the nationwide network of electric vehicle charging stations.
The NZ$6bn announced in Thursday’s budget for a national resilience plan will initially be spent on clean-up and recovery from record-breaking floods that swamped Auckland in January and Cyclone Gabrielle, which in February devastated parts of the North Island. But finance minister Grant Robertson promised in remarks at parliament on Thursday that attention would then turn to increasing the “resilience” of New Zealand’s infrastructure to cope with increasing climate-related weather disasters.
The funding includes $300m for “significant upgrades” to roads for slip prevention, flood mitigation, and managing the risk of rising seas, said Michael Wood, the transport minister, in a statement.
“It was unacceptable that basic lifeline services like telecommunications, power and transport links were knocked out for so long,” Robertson added, referring to the recent cyclone and storms.
With damage from the twin disasters expected to cost billions, Robertson had warned that this year’s budget would be a no frills document, prompting questions about how the Labour government would balance the cost of weather clean-up and recovery with years of promised commitments to curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
Megan Woods, the energy and resources minister, said in a statement on Thursday that the government’s investments would do both, making the transport network “more resilient to weather events, and climate friendly”.
Measures to address emissions included $120m over four years to expand the country’s electric vehicle charging network, Woods said, with a focus on rural areas. A partnership with the private sector will produce up to 23 hubs, each supplying up to 20 EV chargers.
A grant was announced for purchases of low emissions heavy vehicles such as trucks and buses to incentivise change to a national vehicle fleet that’s among the world’s oldest and dirtiest.
Funds were also pledged for adaptation in remote communities, such as Westport in the South Island, that are most threatened by floods, storms and sea level rises.
The $6bn for a national resilience plan would, during its first two years, “focus on cyclone rebuild and recovery”, Robertson told reporters on Thursday. Improving the “resilience” of infrastructure in the long-term would follow, he added.
This year’s weather disasters drew fresh attention to the country’s ailing infrastructure. New Zealand’s crumbling state highways in its remote regions – including some hardest hit by Cyclone Gabrielle – are the result of decades of inefficiencies and under-investment in infrastructure, successive reports and Treasury figures have said.
The new national resilience plan would “reduce the severe infrastructure deficits that have held New Zealand back”, Robertson said.
The funding committed in this year’s budget amounted to “more than business as usual”, the finance minister said, and would be paid for through “making greater use of the government’s balance sheet”. Labour had already committed to $71bn for infrastructure over the next five years, he added.
