Aug 17, 2026 · 25 min · 11 segments
Morrison chair Rob Morrison discusses the Kiwi infrastructure manager’s major global deals, New Zealand’s infrastructure failures and the booming data centre opportunity. He explains why AI, renewable…
Rob MorrisonGuest
Simon ShepherdHost
I- Is it ironic that you are such a successful infrastructure management company, and yet New Zealand has a bit of a problem doing infrastructure?
I don't know if that's ironic, but as I mentioned, w- we've been going 38 years.
I, I don't know how many governments there've been in New Zealand-
...
in 38 years.
There's, there's been a lot.
And one of the things we don't do well in infrastructure is plan for it.
We...
We're very poor, poor at long-term strategic planning, not just in infrastructure, but in general in New Zealand.
We're, we're poor at long-term strategic planning.
Infrastructure's a game where you have to plan long term.
So you do need bipartisan support for infrastructure, and there's no question in New Zealand that, um, the stop-start nature driven by our, the short, short-term political, uh-
... um, terms has, has impacted on infrastructure.
I think Chris Bishop's done q- a good job of, of trying to build more of a bipartisan approach to longer term thinking around, around infrastructure.
But that, that impacts.
I think we have tended to lack expertise when it comes to large scale infrastructure in, in the public service.
We haven't done that well.
We've, we've either gone for, um, what's the cheapest option-
I- Is it ironic that you are such a successful infrastructure management company, and yet New Zealand has a bit of a problem doing infrastructure?
I don't know if that's ironic, but as I mentioned, w- we've been going 38 years.
I, I don't know how many governments there've been in New Zealand-
...
in 38 years.
There's, there's been a lot.
And one of the things we don't do well in infrastructure is plan for it.
We...
We're very poor, poor at long-term strategic planning, not just in infrastructure, but in general in New Zealand.
We're, we're poor at long-term strategic planning.
Infrastructure's a game where you have to plan long term.
So you do need bipartisan support for infrastructure, and there's no question in New Zealand that, um, the stop-start nature driven by our, the short, short-term political, uh-
... um, terms has, has impacted on infrastructure.
I think Chris Bishop's done q- a good job of, of trying to build more of a bipartisan approach to longer term thinking around, around infrastructure.
But that, that impacts.
I think we have tended to lack expertise when it comes to large scale infrastructure in, in the public service.
We haven't done that well.
We've, we've either gone for, um, what's the cheapest option-
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
