Local Infrastructure Investment, Maintenance and Renewal: A Comparative Analysis of Contemporary Australian and New Zealand Local Government

The preservation and expansion of local infrastructure presents significant funding and management challenges for local government systems across the developed world. A useful way of approaching the local infrastructure question is to undertake comparative analysis of different local government jurisdictions with similar institutional characteristics. This paper accordingly considers the local infrastructure problem in contemporary Australian and New Zealand local government, which share many common institutional features, in the light of the recent deliberations of two national inquiries into local government finance in the two countries. It is argued that while both the intergovernmental grants system and the quantum of these grants differ significantly between the two nations, local government infrastructure in both countries requires urgent attention from policy makers and similar policy solutions can be identified.