Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has been talking to media in Sydney, on the first stop on his third visit to Australia since taking office.

Luxon began by saying the country has “an infrastructure deficit” which the government wanted to get on top of.

Along with three of his ministers, he had met the New South Wales premier Christopher Minns on Thursday to pick up ideas on how the state had progressed its housing, schools, roading and public transport projects.

New Zealand needed to be able to open up to private funding for the work, Luxon said.

“Some of the regulatory settings here in New South Wales enable infrastructure to be built in a much quicker, lower cost, faster way of working and also make it more attractive for investors.”

The New Zealand government was intent on establishing good governance for the projects and a meeting with Infrastructure New South Wales this morning had been useful for shedding light on “good mechanisms” for this.

The management of private finance within public projects had also been on the agenda.

He said mechanisms could be put in place with the agreement of other political parties so that projects could continue smoothly even if there was a change of government.

Luxon added that the politics needed to be taken out of infrastructure.

“That’s the way in which we get a long-term pipeline of projects well defined.”

Its role, independence and the way the commission prioritised projects would also need to be clearly defined, he added.

Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop who is also in Sydney said the Infrastructure Commission was working on drawing up a list of credible projects for the next five to 20 years.

The concept had been taken from Infrastructure Australia and Infrastructure New South Wales and the latter’s approach had been discussed with some of its staff this morning.

“We’re deliberately building up that institutional capability within the Infrastructure Commission of New Zealand right now and that’s some of the ideas we’ve picked up from Infrastructure New South Wales and it was good to talk about that with them this morning.”

The NSW government is building the Cowra water storage project so the region can share water when it hits critically low levels.
Photo: New South Wales government

Plea to public over meth ‘lollies’

Luxon said the meth ‘lollies’ issue was “incredibly deeply concerning” and the government was very worried about public safety.

“Please please please check check check that actually what you’re feeding your children is safe and make sure you know what these lollies look like so that you can actually remove them.”

The police would be doing their best to find out how the lolly bags came to be donated to the Auckland City Mission, Luxon said, but the more important issue at this point was safeguarding the public.

The prime minister was also asked about criticism from UK environmentalist Jonathan Porritt, who called Luxon “a hypocrite”.

His comments were reported today by RNZ.

Porritt, a former chair of Air New Zealand’s sustainability panel, is annoyed the airline has backtracked on its 2020 emissions reductions target.

He is also unimpressed Luxon has not maintained an earlier commitment to sustainability issues since becoming prime minister.

Luxon refused to comment except to say he hadn’t seen the comments and was no longer chief executive of Air New Zealand.

Security and defence will be front and centre when Luxon later meets counterpart Anthony Albanese, amid concerns over any potential AUKUS involvement.