There is something almost admirable about spending a fortune on roads, pipes, schools and hospitals without quite knowing what state any of them are in. Or, in some cases, where exactly they are.

For decades, nobody bothered to check. Now someone finally has.

Three weeks ago, the Infrastructure Commission delivered New Zealand’s first National Infrastructure Plan. It spent two years producing something no previous government had thought to ask for: a proper account of what we have.

The Commission’s findings were not cheerful.

New Zealand has spent around 5.8 percent of GDP on infrastructure annually, among the highest in the OECD. Yet it ranks near the bottom for efficiency. For asset management, it comes fourth last. For “Accountability and Professionalism,” it is dead last.

Over the years, only half the central government agencies that manage major public assets have maintained proper records of those assets, or how to maintain them.

Nobody kept track of the condition of our schools, hospitals, courts or prisons. The defence estate has accumulated a maintenance backlog of $480 million.

Half of all spending proposals in recent Budgets have arrived without even a business case. One might call this faith-based asset management.

The state of our infrastructure has become a matter of belief rather than knowledge. But there are advantages, too.

You cannot be accused of neglecting assets you did not know you had. Nobody can prove a pipe was deteriorating without data on the pipe. And without a long-term plan, you retain glorious flexibility to spend money on whatever catches your eye.

The Commission documented what all those years of comfortable neglect had left undocumented. Parliament held a special debate on its findings last week.

All parties agreed that infrastructure was far too important to be left to everyday politics. Instead, they would think in decades. They would build durable, bipartisan consensus based on hard data.

But then, Government MPs promptly championed projects in their own electorates. Opposition MPs attacked the government’s priorities. One noted that a proposed expressway would cost the equivalent of seven Dunedin Hospitals. Another defended it as long overdue.

New Zealand’s first attempt at generational, bipartisan consensus lasted roughly thirty minutes. Establishing the habit might require a bit more practice.

Still, the Commission’s work confirmed one thing. We are world-class at spending money on infrastructure.

Now we just need to find out what we spent it on.