Minister for the South Island James Meager says he is eager to drive economic growth and infrastructure development by advocating for the needs of Te Waipounamu in Cabinet.
Meager, the first-term MP for Rangitata, was promoted to the newly created role last month.
Speaking to Breakfast, he said the creation of the role showed Prime Minister Christopher Luxon recognised the South Island had a “huge part” to play in the Government’s much touted economic growth plan.
“The role that the Prime Minister has outlined for me is one of advocacy and coordination, taking an all of government approach and an oversight approach to decisions that affect the South Island.
“I’m really excited about getting stuck into it and helping with that growth story.”
Meager will receive just one extra staff member to support him in that role, and when asked if that was enough, said he didn’t think an “army of officials and bureaucrats poring over paperwork in an office” was needed.
“What you need to do is get out there and listen to businesses, listen to councils, listen to the people that are actually generating the growth in the South Island, and find out from them what their priorities are.
“It’s a big island to get around, as people know, and there’s a lot of travel, and a lot of people to meet and to see.”
In the Government’s latest three-year transport plan, the South Island received $4 billion or almost a 17% allocation of the transport budget.
Meager said the South Island had a few “pivotal” transport projects that required investment to make the network “good, safe and reliable”.
“If you think about some of the weather events over the past few years, if they take out a bridge or two, that will cut the island in half and really put some of the movement of goods and people at risk.”
Different parts of the island had different infrastructure needs, and he said his role was about getting around to these areas so he could feed back to Wellington and provide input at the Cabinet committee level.
“That’s the chance for me to have an input and say, have we considered the impact of this policy widely on the South Island, or if there’s a particular project or a particular piece of infrastructure, how I can advocate for the best outcome for South Islanders?”
A priority for this year was to “kick start some of those big infrastructure projects” across Te Waipounamu, he said.
“If you look at what we campaigned on during the election, it was a lot around renewable energy and around the use of water and water stores, so I’d like to see some of those big projects that are both listed in the Fast Track application process, but also projects that have been kicking around for years, get up off the ground and get running.”
