Australia and New Zealand are in the midst of their largest-ever infrastructure builds. In Australia this amounts to almost $400 billion in major transport, water, energy and communications projects in the national 'priority pipeline'. New Zealand is making similar levels of investment. Both countries face persistent project delays, cost over-runs and loss of trust in government to deliver the infrastructure necessary to underpin democratic societies.
Since 2017 the ANU Institute for Infrastructure in Society (I2S) has analysed the political, societal and community factors impacting major infrastructure delivery in Australia (2017-2026) and New Zealand (beginning in 2025). The State of Infrastructure and Engagement findings show that almost 80% of Australian infrastructure professionals 'agree' or 'strongly agree' that project politicisation 'results in unnecessary project delays or cancellations' (Sanchez, Bice and O'Connell, 2023). In New Zealand over half of infrastructure sector professionals cite project politicisation as the main influence on project delays or cancellations, with research revealing that more than $69 billion in NZ infrastructure projects have been impacted in the past decade, alone (Kizilca, O'Connell and Sanchez, 2026).
These challenges speak directly to the conference's 'Politics, power and the polycrisis' theme, analysing major infrastructure delivery as an everyday example of the ways in which citizens' declining trust in government, policy politicisation and, in certain instances, government corruption threaten government capacity to meet basic societal needs while also undermining the government-society relationships necessary to high-functioning democracy. In the case of major infrastructure, these tensions and infrastructure failures also threaten the capacity of Australia and New Zealand to mitigate climate change and address net zero goals. Renewable energy, sustainable water and flood mitigation measures are all bundled into the infrastructure delayed or cancelled by politicisation and loss of social licence.
Our paper presents findings from nine years of data collection with an aim to generate discussion around the intersection of infrastructure policy, project politicisation and government capacity to deliver. We want to open critical conversation about the disconnects between the ways in which major infrastructure is governed, its common use as a political enticement and the ways in which poor delivery seeds community mistrust that flows through to general misgivings about government capacity and genuine concern for citizens' priorities and wellbeing (Otor, Bice and Henderson, 2026).
