Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop and Labour leader Chris Hipkins. Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi / Reece Baker
Political parties are already squabbling over the extent to which either side will back a bipartisan approach to transport projects.
The first ever National Infrastructure Plan lays out an independent roadmap for infrastructure investment in the coming decades.
Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop said the coalition will consider the plan and report back on its formal response in six months' time.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said his party had offered to work with the government in the coming months, before criticising the coaliton's prized Roads of National Significance (RoNS) programme.
The plan pointed out the major transport project pipeline had grown much faster than the funding available to deliver it, with government ambition far exceeding the revenue likely to be available over the coming years.
"It is a fairly carefully guarded criticism of the RoNS programme and it's a legitimate criticism," Hipkins said.
"Billions of dollars of investment without proper business cases, without real consideration of the benefits and the costs of those projects. We do need to take that seriously."
Bishop said the 17 Roads of National Significance had been planned to "shape the nation and drive growth and productivity" and would not be rolled out all at once.
"The construction market cannot cope with 17 roads being built all at the same time and some of them aren't even ready to be built straight away anyway.
"We've always said that they will be sequenced and prioritised in a way that is logical for the market and in terms of deliverability and cost benefit ratios. I think the point the commission makes is a really good one."
On his call for a bipartisan approach to infrastructure, Bishop said any suggestion Labour had been left out of the loop on the the Commission's plan was untrue.
"It's been a bit frustrating to be honest to hear Chris Hipkins, he might have said on RNZ this morning, that the government's developed a plan that the Labour Party has had nothing to do with.
"They have been briefed extensively throughout the plan. No one may have mentioned that to him, which is an issue for him, but there have been extensive engagements with the Labour Party."
On a second Auckland harbour crossing, Bishop said he was committed to working on a project that would last beyond the three year electoral cycle.
"I've said for a year now that we'll be making that decision as part of a joint approach with the Labour Party because any change of government will want to see that project through.
"I haven't had formal advice on it but whatever ends up being built, will be tolled. The question is whether or not the existing connection is tolled. That's a very big decision and we're taking advice on it."
Hipkins said a second Auckland harbour crossing was well overdue and his party would work with the government on a long term plan.
"It's well and truly time for us to be putting in place active plans to do that. We're talking about a decade or two to do that. This is a long term project so the more we can approach that with bipartisanship the better for the country."
