Opinion | “Going for Growth” held back by a constrained system

The current government has made it clear New Zealand is “all in” on growth. We need growth to sustain our economy, maintain living standards, and service increasing debt levels.

But investment and delivery of growth infrastructure has been constrained.

From the front end of development, this is not just a market cycle issue. It was already becoming harder, slower, and more uncertain to get projects underway. The gap between what we say we want and what we are delivering continues to widen.  

This is not a policy problem. It’s a performance problem. 

The constraint sits in the operating environment around development: the rules, processes, behaviours, and risk settings that shape whether projects move forward or stall. Over time, that environment has evolved to prioritise process over outcomes, and risk avoidance over delivery.  

At every level of central and local government, the direction is clear: enable development, increase housing supply, and support economic growth. These objectives are widely understood and supported by the wider property industry. 

But outcomes tell a different story. Projects stall, costs escalate, and timeframes extend beyond what is commercially viable. Capital hesitates, and in many cases leaves.  

Capital goes where outcomes are achievable. If New Zealand developments do not stack up, investment moves to other opportunities where outcomes are more certain.  

If we want to fund the infrastructure required to support growth, this must change.  

At the centre of this is how we think about risk.

Development involves uncertainty. True growth cannot exist in a system that seeks to eliminate all risk. It requires judgement, experience, and decisions with imperfect information.

Managed well, risk enables better outcomes.

Our current system does the opposite. It rewards caution, discourages initiative, and makes ‘no’ the safest answer in the room. 

The law of diminishing returns is evident. Eliminating most risk is relatively straightforward and cost effective. Chasing the final margin of risk reduction is not. It adds time, cost and duplication without materially improving outcomes. 

Whether it is modelling low probability events or applying increasingly conservative technical thresholds, we are chasing statistical shadows at disproportionate cost.  

More review, less ownership 

The rise of peer reviews reflects this shift. Where accountability once sat clearly with experienced professionals, it is now spread across multiple layers of review. Rather than reinforcing accountability, it has diluted it.

More participants are involved than ever before, with less clarity about who owns the outcome. Decisions take longer, requirements increase, and the process expands without improving outcomes.  

This is not about reducing quality. It is about recognising that duplication is not the same as accountability.  

It’s not about speed, it’s about certainty. 

Fast Track consenting highlights a different aspect of the same issue.  

It is not always faster, and it is not cheaper. But it provides something the traditional pathway does not: access to experienced decision makers with a clear mandate and defined timeframes. In short, it provides certainty. 

The volume of fast track applications in the region is not accidental. When developers choose a process that is not materially faster or cheaper, it indicates trust in how decisions are made is critical to major investment decisions. 

New rules won’t fix old behaviours 

The result is a system with more participants, more review, and less ownership. Risk is distributed across multiple parties, but so is responsibility. When everyone is involved, no one is fully accountable. 

Significant reform is coming through planning changes, Fast Track pathways, local government restructuring and insurance settings. This presents a genuine opportunity to reset how growth is delivered. 

But structural change alone will not produce different outcomes if behaviours, risk settings, and accountability remain the same. If we continue to prioritise process and risk minimisation over delivery, we will recreate the same constraints under a different set of rules.

The challenge sits with both industry and government. 

We need to reinforce policy changes with clear expectations on delivery, empower experienced decision makers, and accept risk is a necessary part of progress. 

This requires leadership. 

Governance and management must be prepared to accept that not every decision will be perfect, that things will go wrong, and that progress depends on people using judgement rather than defaulting to process. The industry does not lack ambition, capability, or intent. It lacks certainty and confidence to act.

That is fixable. The system is made up of people, behaviours and choices, which means it can be changed. Direction needs to be set at the top and reinforced through organisations so that those closest to delivery are empowered to deliver. 

Growth is achievable if we restore accountability, back judgement and create a system that enables outcomes rather than constrains them.

The greatest risk is not getting growth wrong. It’s continuing to operate a system that prevents it from happening at all.