Early next month State Highway 2 through the Waioweka Gorge reopens to two-way traffic for the first time since January. At the Goldsmith slip, where more than 20,000 cubic metres of hillside came down, a 45-metre rockfall barrier is now in place. Soon after it was installed, it caught more than 10 cubic metres of falling rock. 

That is resilience doing its job. 

The South Island is getting the same attention. More than $150 million from Budget 2026 is going into five of the mainland’s most vulnerable state highways, including SH94 to Milford Sound, SH60 over Tākaka Hill and SH6 between Haast and Hāwea. For the operators who keep those communities stocked, rockfall and washouts are not abstract risks. They are lost days, long detours and missed deliveries. This sits on top of a record 42 per cent lift in South Island road funding under the current National Land Transport Plan. 

This week the Prime Minister stood on the site of the Cambridge to Piarere Expressway and asked NZTA chief executive Brett Gliddon a fair question. Why five years and $1.8 billion for a 16-kilometre four-lane road? Why not 18 months, with lights up and crews working around the clock? 

Some will read that as a dressing down. I read it as a healthy conversation. Mr Luxon called it coaching, and Brett accepted the point that NZTA wants to deliver faster. Political leadership getting into the detail of delivery is exactly what our members want to see. And NZTA has earned credit along the way. The Waikare Gorge realignment between Wairoa and Napier started construction just over a week ago, reportedly around $50 million under budget. 

Speed is half of the equation. Certainty is the other half.

Infrastructure New Zealand estimates 25 years of stop-start politics has cost us $11.8 billion. Their Let’s Build NZ campaign carries a line I would hang in every Cabinet room: “Build for generations, not elections.” Their call this week to keep individual projects out of coalition deals is sensible. It echoes NRC’s long-standing call for a roading plan set independently of the electoral cycle. So is their view that the Roads of National Significance are construction-ready and simply need funding. A contractor will not invest in extra crews and machinery for round-the-clock work without confidence the pipeline survives the next election. 

All of this adds up to one message. Invest well. Look after the roads we have, so the gorges stay open. Build new ones faster and at better value. And once a project starts, finish it. That is the heart of our first election call: spend smarter for a better network. 

Both major party leaders have committed to bipartisan infrastructure talks within 100 days of the election. Our members, running more than 16,000 trucks, pay for this network every time they buy a road user charge licence. They deserve a government that challenges the system, funds the pipeline, and gets on with building it.

Justin Tighe-Umbers, Chief Executive, National Road Carriers Assn