Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones admitted on Q+A tonight that the state of New Zealand’s infrastructure planning is “dismal” and the government needs to get on with building “rather than writing more reports about it.”

“We didn’t suddenly arrive at this rather dismal point in the last 18 months. For a long time we have talked ourselves and processed ourselves into paralysis and we've got to get on with building our infrastructure rather than writing more reports about it.”

His comments come after the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council warned that New Zealand’s infrastructure is at “crisis point”.

Minister Jones told Jack Tame that the government is open to public private partnerships to fund infrastructure.

“There are some things that ideologically we will not be using private capital on, they’re schools, they’re prisons and they’re the health system, after that we are in the business of innovation, and imagination and a blend of public and private capital.”

Shane Jones says he believes there’s scope in future for the government to borrow more to fund infrastructure.

“Both Mr Twyford, myself and Grant Robertson have been in quite intense discussions about this and I accept that Grant Robertson's view that you have to maintain a moderate level of debt to cope with adverse events carries a lot of ballast but naturally I am constantly agitating for us to increase the amount of infrastructure expenditure certainly if what the economic commentators are saying comes to pass that we’re going to face bleak weather infrastructure spending is fantastic in that context.”

Please find the full interview here.

Q+A, 9:30pm Mondays on TVNZ 1 and one hour later on TVNZ 1 + 1.

Streamed live at www.tvnz.co.nz

Thanks to the support from NZ On Air.

Q+A is also on Facebook + Twitter + YouTube

© Scoop Media