New Zealand’s infrastructure faces a historic period of deep and intergenerational change. Historic, because many of the challenges we face are new and uncertain; deep, because it impacts all parts of our society; and intergenerational, because the effort must be sustained, not over months and years, but over decades.

It’s hard to think of an activity that doesn’t use infrastructure. We commute to work on transport networks that have been constructed and maintained by generations of New Zealanders. These same networks carry the goods that stock our supermarket shelves with food. These supermarkets are powered by electricity produced by power stations built decades ago. This electricity also charges phones that connect to a network of cell towers, which bring us closer to the world and to each other.

Te Waihanga exists to look across these connected networks of infrastructure in a holistic and coordinated way. This strategy takes this more holistic view of the infrastructure system. It also takes a long-term view, recognising that the needs and aspirations we have for our society and therefore, our infrastructure, are constantly changing.