Wood may U-turn on

The Government’s flagship infrastructure programme, the most expensive in modern history, is in danger of collapse, with Transport Minister Michael Wood now refusing to say whether all the 22 projects promised nearly a year ago will actually be built in the way they were announced.

That puts the fate of $6.8 billion worth of road and rail infrastructure up in the air, and could lead to projects like Auckland’s $1.3b Mill Rd, ¯or Wellington’s $817 million Otaki to north of Levin and $258m Melling interchange either pared back or dropped entirely.

In January last year, the Government announced the NZ Upgrade Programme, a $12b infrastructure package which included upgrades to schools and hospitals and infrastructure needed to combat climate change. The centrepiece of the project was $6.8b for transport projects of which $5.3b was to be spent on roads. The $5.3b cost of those projects was taken from the best estimates of Waka Kotahi-NZTA at the time. After the projects were green lit, Waka Kotahi went back and did a more detailed costing of the roads, a practice known as baselining.

Documents released to Stuff under the Official Information Act show this took almost a year.

Each month, officials provided an update to then Transport Minister Phil Twyford and later Michael Wood. Some of these briefings warned the baselines were facing pressures that could push costs significantly higher than those forecast in January 2020. They also warned there was no contingency fund built into the Upgrade funding for transport, meaning any overruns would force Wood to go back to the finance minister for more money.

Wood has finally received advice based on those baselines.

When asked by Stuff about the cost pressures mentioned in the