New Zealanders have put water pipes and solar panels at the top of the list of things they want built, and pushed new housing a long way down it.
Research company Ipsos released the New Zealand findings of its two yearly infrastructure study on Tuesday. Water supply and sewage came first, picked by 47 percent as an investment priority for the country. Solar energy was second on 40 percent and flood protection third on 39 percent. Housing supply, which topped the same survey two years ago, has fallen to sixth.
Ipsos country manager Carin Hercock told RNZ the shift was towards infrastructure that holds up when things go wrong. “We have definitely seen a shift towards more resilient types of infrastructure. Water supply and sewage is sitting at number one at 47 percent, but solar energy has jumped up to number two and they were number six just two years ago,” she said.
That ranking is not the same as the rest of the world’s. The global version of the study, run across 29 countries between 24 April and 8 May this year, also put water supply and sewerage first, on 42 percent. But new housing held second place globally on 37 percent. In New Zealand it sits sixth, below flood protection.
New Zealanders are also harder on their own infrastructure than most. The survey found 41 percent were dissatisfied with national infrastructure and 31 percent satisfied. The global country average was 38 percent satisfied and 30 percent dissatisfied. Sixty nine percent of New Zealanders said the country was not doing enough to meet its infrastructure needs, against 57 percent globally, and just 21 percent thought New Zealand had a good record of delivering national infrastructure projects, against 34 percent globally.
Hercock traced the drop back to a single week in February 2023. “We did see, our satisfaction with infrastructure was quite high prior to Cyclone Gabrielle and then it dropped significantly after that event and I think it potentially showed we could be really vulnerable to infrastructure during national disasters, and we haven’t really recovered since that time, although it has improved statistically significantly in the last two years,” she said.
The awkward part for whoever wins on 7 November is the money. Only 41 percent of those surveyed supported paying for extra infrastructure through higher taxes or higher consumer charges. But 66 percent said they were comfortable with private investment in infrastructure if it produced the improvements the country needs, and the most popular option overall was a mix of public and private funding. In other words, people want the pipes replaced and they would rather someone else’s balance sheet did it.
Set against what people say they want, the work already under way lines up better than the satisfaction numbers suggest. Water is the biggest single programme in the country. Under Local Water Done Well, councils have submitted water services delivery plans forecasting $47.9 billion of spending on water services infrastructure in the ten years to June 2034, roughly $9 billion more than earlier estimates.
On 1 July, Local Government Minister Simon Watts said every mainland council had an approved plan, after Waitaki District Council’s amended plan was accepted and the district joined Central Otago, Clutha and Gore in a new southern water organisation. “The milestone highlights the steady progress of Local Water Done Well, with implementation now well underway across the country,” Watts said. Five council owned water organisations began operating on 1 July, including Wellington’s Tiaki Wai and Selwyn Water, with a further 13 expected within a year. On the Government’s numbers that would put three quarters of New Zealanders on water services run by organisations owned by 46 councils.
Solar has moved even faster, and almost nobody voted for it. Cumulative solar capacity rose from 545 megawatts at the start of 2025 to 830 megawatts by the end of it, a 52 percent jump in a single year, according to MBIE figures reported last week. With the 150 megawatt Tauhei farm in the Waikato and the 38 megawatt Omeheu farm in the Bay of Plenty switched on this year, the national total has passed a gigawatt. Solar now accounts for 9.1 percent of renewable generation capacity, up from 1.9 percent in 2020. That is the fastest growing thing on the survey’s list, and it has happened largely through private money rather than government programmes, which is roughly the model the survey says people are comfortable with.
The wider pipeline is not short of projects either. The Infrastructure Commission’s June pipeline snapshot, published this month, lists almost 12,500 initiatives worth $290 billion, up $15.6 billion in three months. But only $95.8 billion of that is fully funded, and the projected spend over the next 12 months on initiatives with a confirmed funding source is $18.6 billion. The list of things New Zealand intends to build is roughly three times the size of the list it has actually paid for.
That gap is where the argument lands. Water bills are the sharpest version of it. Last Thursday about 300 people marched on Parliament over the size of the Wellington region’s first separate water bills and forecasts that they will nearly triple within a decade. Those bills are the direct result of the investment the same public says it wants. Voters have told pollsters they want the pipes fixed, the flood banks raised and more solar built, and they have also told pollsters they are not keen on paying for it through taxes or charges. Both major parties will spend the next ten weeks explaining how they intend to square that.
If you want to see how the parties compare on infrastructure, water and the rest of it before you vote, our voting tool lines up their policies side by side.
What would you put at the top of the list, and would you pay more to get it? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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