On 20 February 2026, Property Council submitted to the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee on the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Amendment Bill 2025.
Why this matters to our members
New Zealand faces a longstanding infrastructure funding deficit, driven by population growth, historic underinvestment in renewal and maintenance, and over-reliance on local authority balance sheets. The Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act 2020 was intended to address these challenges but the framework has proved overly complex and difficult to use in practice, resulting in very low uptake and limited impact.
Our view
Property Council supports the intent of the Bill to improve the accessibility and usability of the Infrastructure Funding and Financing framework. However, aspects of the Bill retain unnecessary complexity and uncertainty that risk continuing to deter uptake.
At a high level, Property Council recommended:
- There is a statutory obligation requiring the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (‘the Monitoring body’) to publish a suite of standardised, tiered IFF templates;
- The Monitoring body publishes formal regulations/statutory guidance for beneficiary identification and cost allocation;
- Levy proposals are required to include a completed beneficiary and cost allocation cost schedule using a template;
- Supplementing the opt-in system with a ballot-based approval process or a Business Improvement District (‘BID’)-style model;
- Where either of the ballot-based or BID style thresholds is met, the Minister must treat the levy as supported for the purposes of clause 17, new section 27;
- The Monitoring body publishes guidance for cross-agency coordination;
- Better alignment and cross-references to the Urban Development Act;
- The Monitoring body publishes governance best practice standards for SPVs recommending private sector representation and transparent procurement rules;
- For developer-led projects or where developers bear significant levy risk, statutory recognition of private sector board seats is enabled;
- The recovery of Operation & Maintenance costs (or at least a portion of the cost) through rates, or a targeted rate over the life of the infrastructure;
- That levy proposals be required to include mandatory reconciliation schedules that clearly and transparently set out the sources of all funds; and
- That statutory guidance or standardised templates be developed to support the consistency of mandatory reconciliation schedules.