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7:59 am, June 29th, 2026 - 14 comments
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Chris Hipkins’ speech at the Labour Party conference yesterday
some of the apprenticeship policy detail
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics/633845/election-26-labour-proposes-apprenticeship-boost-expansion
Very good follow up interview by campaign manager Kieran McAnulty on morning report.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2019041171/mcanulty-discusses-labour-s-roadmap-to-election
Better paid jobs. More housing at a cheaper cost and better opportunities for our young.
The following is a far more inspiring and realistic plan to achieve the above.
Construction remained the leading industry for company liquidations in NZ.
As Hipkins pointed out in his speech, there has been many job losses. And many have left and set up shop overseas.
Therefore, we can't rely on this sector to take on new apprentices in their frail state. Nor can we rely on them to pay them well when they later qualify.
This is why government needs to step up and fill this market inability and make those above stated goals a reality.
So the proposal is government sets up a construction firm (hiring the expertise to run it of course) that builds houses nation wide. Creating new jobs and opportunities far and wide.
And because it will be state owned, they get to set the objectives they desire. Moreover, it can be run at cost (or at a small return) to ensure lower cost housing and better paid jobs.
In my field of large scale infrastructure, we are now having to retrench a lot of good people. It is truly gutting, and at some point the will come for me.
In NZTA they are cutting a lot of people, both in Delivery and in Regulatory Policy and Implementation. Internally because everyone can apply for everyone else's job, it is worse than a "jungle primary" and more like Lord of the Flies.
Construction is of course a lead indicator but it also most certainly a lag-and-drag indicator of how long it is going to take to get us out of this.
Truly gutting indeed. I hear you and feel for you knowing the clock is ticking.
Don't take this the wrong way – job losses are the biggest impact on people and families, even to a second generation or more.
But the big risk with civil infrastructure is the money tied up in the machinery.
Some of it is incredibly expensive and only has a single purpose – not like a nail gun, that can build farm sheds when the housing market is down. This stuff is idle when there's no infrastructure happening, and it costs money every day that it isn't being used.
At some point, when there's no foreseeable contracts in this country, the machinery has to go offshore where it can pay for itself, and the price of this country's infrastructure projects, when they do happen, are inflated, just to get the stuff away from where it is employed and profitable and back to NZ.
We nearly hit that point after COVID, I think, and we don't want to go there again.
why is it losing money every day it's not being used?
Would it be that unless the machine is working money is not coming in to cover purchase loans?
I guess, but it's an odd framing that presumably leads to the problem thinker was naming. I'm sure it's normal business practice, but it just makes me think NZ should be owning its own machinery outright.
Yep almost as if we need a large organisation that could over see several infrastructure projects and not be at the whim of petty, aimless shit like this government has been throwing round.
We could call it Ministry of Works 2.0.
It's one of the mysteries for me about the climate crisis, that people aren't thinking about what it might be like when we can't keep up with repairs from weather events. I mean, the infrastructure companies must be seeing what is happening first hand. And I do think this year people are starting to get what it might be like eg with that repeated bridge washing out. But I don't think people understand yet how it is going to be normal, not being able to repair things. And thinking about what gear we should have on our own soil. It's basic resilience and future proofing thinking. Neoliberalism has made us soft and dull-witted.
Some are thinking about it and are suggesting better adaptation or in some cases, retreat.
yes, but that doesn't solve the issue of how we keep repairing roads and bridges and rail lines in our particularly vulnerable landscape. We can move whole towns away from the coast, but that's a different thing.
Money tied up in machinery can be circumvented by short-term leasing the least used and most expensive when required