It’s clear from even a short conversation with Devonport resident Paul Blair, CEO of Infrastructure New Zealand, that he’s passionate about infrastructure – the complexities, the challenges, and the opportunities that new approaches to infrastructure maintenance and development offer for local communities and New Zealand as a whole. Christine Young talks to Paul about his job, and his community interests.
Paul is proudly North Shore born and bred. He was born in North Shore hospital and grew up in Birkenhead and Torbay before his family relocated to Hauraki Corner, conveniently just before he started at Takapuna Grammar, where his three sons are now pupils. Apart from a stint at Waikato University where he gained Bachelor of Management Studies majoring in Finance, and a 13-year OE that took him to the UK for two years and Australia for 11, the Shore has always been home.
He and his family now live in Devonport, in the old Presbyterian church hall, which they purchased along with the venerable old church from chess grandmaster Murray Chandler two and a half years ago. “The church is a real gem, a beautiful building which we love,” he enthuses. But it’s badly in need of earthquake strengthening, and the family is “glamping” in the hall while they make plans for the church itself. “Given that it’s a heritage building, it’s really important to the community,” says Paul, “and we’re taking time to figure out how to strengthen it and ideally return it to community use. It’s complicated by heritage, cost and complexity.” Right now, he adds, it can’t be used by the community because it’s not safe.
In addition to taking on the challenge of a neglected heritage icon, Paul has also taken on a new career challenge, moving from institutional banking, heading a 90-strong team for BNZ focused on the needs of New Zealand’s largest corporates, financial institutions and government clients, and developing and leading BNZ’s infrastructure strategy.
A year ago, he was appointed CEO of Infrastructure New Zealand, moving to the executive role after four years as a director on Infrastructure New Zealand’s board. He now has the operational bit between his teeth to ensure that central and local government, government departments and private entities collectively give due attention, and apply some new thinking, to infrastructure issues.
He may be a North Shore boy, but when it comes to infrastructure, Paul is a broad and deep thinker, driven by the interests of New Zealand’s diverse communities and the need for strong planning based on a vision of where and what we want New Zealand to be. His enthusiasm for the opportunities offered to New Zealand if we can get infrastructure right is tempered by his concern at “misalignment” in how we approach infrastructure planning and financing. He aims for Infrastructure New Zealand to earn its self-proclaimed “thought leadership” role by engaging stakeholders and the public, mobilising the organisation’s 140 members, and acting as a catalyst to link local and national government and the private sector across traditionally siloed boundaries, to ensure that development properly serves the New Zealand’s needs, now and in the future. Paul’s focus is on the potential for coordinated long-term thinking and planning to create great community results.
Just what is infrastructure, and what are Paul’s concerns? Infrastructure, Paul concedes, is a very broad term. A “simplistic definition is that it is the physical platform on which you deliver wellbeing (economic, social, environmental and cultural) outcomes for people”. More specifically, infrastructure is usually defined as either horizontal (such as roads, rail, water, electricity, telecomms) or vertical (e.g. hospitals, schools, universities, government buildings).
According to Infrastructure New Zealand, approximately 40% of New Zealand’s $300 billion-worth of infrastructure is owned by the central government; approximately 40% by local government and the remaining 20% by private companies. The “misalignment” that plagues the country’s infrastructure maintenance and development partly results from the imbalance in revenue available to devote to publicly-owned infrastructure where 90% of all taxes are held by central government while only 10% of taxes (and rates) is held by local government. Yet local roads, public transport, water and sewage and most ports and airports are owned and funded by local government.
“We have a misaligned government system, a misalignment of responsibility and of funding,” says Paul. Taxes paid to central government amount (on average) to just over $15,250 a person; by contrast, taxes (rates) to local government are just over $1,125 per person, yet we expect local councils to deliver our most essential local infrastructure. In growth centre's like the North Shore, where councils must develop new infrastructure to support growth, councils are constrained in how they can generate the necessary revenue. For example, says Paul, the tax benefits of the planned explosive growth on the North Shore are 90:10 to the government, yet the costs of the infrastructure to support that growth largely fall to Auckland Council. “It’s great that Auckland has developed the Unitary Plan – but Auckland Council doesn’t have the funding to deliver on that plan…. We don’t have an alignment between what Auckland Council can do, and what [growth on] the North Shore can contribute to the country. We should have an all-of-government system where central and local government are on the same page.”
It’s all very well to have (as we do) transparent and non-corrupt government systems and processes in which every last cent is accounted for. “Our view is that we need to move on from some of those ideologies, that you embrace the messiness and accountability of focusing on delivering great outcomes for people, even where central government doesn’t have the money to do it all itself. We need government to do this delicate balancing act where they intervene more in some things, for example in housing, as well as enable local government and the private sector to deliver more. The answer is a partnership.”
It can happen; development can be facilitated and sped up, with nudges from organisation's like Infrastructure New Zealand and support from central government. For example, on the North Shore, the Milldale development is using an alternative funding structure that involves landowner Fulton Hogan building the infrastructure, with Crown Infrastructure Partners (which was also instrumental in the nationwide ultrafast broadband rollout) and ACC involved in funding. “Housing can be brought forward by about 10-plus years from where it would be if Auckland Council had to fund it,” says Paul. “There’s an opportunity for the private sector to work with central government to get things done faster.”
With the aim of stimulating such thinking and guiding infrastructure development out of siloed thinking (public versus private, or housing versus health versus roads, for example), Paul initiated (“rushed out” in his words) an online summit, Vision Week, during the Covid-19 lockdown, in line with his philosophy that “perfection is the enemy of progress”. Pulling together funding from a diverse group of companies and organisations, he amassed an impressive group of 36 New Zealander's from diverse industries and backgrounds and produced the digital think-tank looking at issues like quality housing and sustaining New Zealand – aimed at helping create “an ambitious long-term vision for our lifestyle”. This achieved more than 350,000 interactions over social media. The sessions, including a 10-minute slot from the Prime Minister on the final day, are all available to view at www.visionweek.co.nz.
Ideas are still welcome. It was, says Paul, just a start, a way to prompt the government to take visionary planning seriously and to take a bottom-up perspective on the future of New Zealand. It’s a “work in progress”, but he believes that the Covid-19 shock has given us the opportunity to not continue to put up with what we have. “There are problems New Zealand is not addressing… but our systems are set up to be short term, to favour tactical problems.” He’d like to see a “possibility programme” for New Zealand, a set of visionary, long-term aims that we can work towards. As he points out, getting to the moon was an aim set by President Kennedy without any idea of how it was going to be achieved; once the goal was set, there was something to aim for. The default, he suggests, is that miss out on our potential, and “kick the can to the next generation”.
Which brings us to another of Paul’s many interests and involvements. Last year, shortly after he started as CEO at Infrastructure New Zealand, he became chair of North Shore-based Yes Disability Services Trust board. He is also on the board of the Yes Disability Action Foundation Board, which owns the building from which Yes and other disability organisations operate. Asked by his business mentor Gary Monk to become involved, Paul had not taken much prompting. His 16-year-old son is autistic; Paul had been involved in Autism Awareness Australia, and he knows how difficult it can be to navigate the system to achieve the services and support needed for people with disabilities to succeed. He’s acutely aware that while they had the resources to invest in his son’s future, many families do not. In addition, many people supported them in non-financial ways. Yes, like many charitable Trusts, is a small organisation, and Paul, like other trustees, is actively involved in many facets of supporting its ongoing success. “It’s time for me to give back,” he says.
Paul gives full credit to the operational team for its success. “Yes, is a fantastic organisation,” he says. Paul says the Yes team, led by the extraordinary Sonia Thursby, worked with more than 5000 people during lockdown, using phone, social media and “calling from the gate”, to provide information, reassurance, arrange care, and dealing with anxiety and mental health issues.
As with infrastructure, so with Yes: Paul has the same energy and passion, and a clear view of the difference Yes makes to the many people it works with and to the other disability organisations with which it shares its premises. “We can show up to 10 times the impact from the amounts invested,” he says.
We end our discussion almost as it began, talking about the North Shore. “The North Shore has enormous potential.” But for intensification of Takapuna (and other suburbs) to succeed, it needs a rapid transit solution, and for growth on the Shore to take place, infrastructure needs to be planned and built – in the right places. Civic, business and community leaders need to work together to develop a coordinated spatial plan that maps out not just land use, but considers the social, economic, environmental and cultural impacts well into the future.
“We need an ambitious, funded, coordinated plan for North Shore’s success,” he says.
