Following the government's decision to delay a planned fuel excise increase until 2028, our Chief Economist Eric Crampton joined Sean Plunket on The Platform to explain why funding roads this way is bad policy.

Eric traced how New Zealand's road funding has drifted from a disciplined, user-pays model, where road user charges and fuel excise funded maintenance first, with taxpayer money reserved for tightly-vetted new capacity, to one where general taxpayer top-ups have become routine and cost-benefit standards have slipped. The upshot: skipping the increase doesn't erase the roughly $1.4-1.5 billion cost, it just shifts it onto debt, other spending cuts, or future taxpayers, a case, he argued, of election-year politics winning out over sound infrastructure funding.