Peter MacDonald
So it takes a government minister to politely rein in a bloated and bureaucratic beast like WorkSafe just to call time on what everyone with eyes can see is a farce: the road cone rort.
Let’s not sugarcoat it. The temporary traffic management industry has morphed into a state-sponsored profit scheme. Safety has long taken a back seat to guaranteed income streams for private contractors who’ve embedded themselves deep into the system and feed off ratepayer and taxpayer dollars while waving a stop/go sign.
This isn’t health and safety: it’s daylight robbery in hi-vis.
But it wasn’t always like this.
Once upon a time, not even that long ago, councils had their own in-house road crews. Local men. Lifers. Efficient, no-nonsense crews who ran their operations like clockwork. It was like a military exercise: in early, job done, no drama. Roads weren’t shut down for weeks on end, because these teams knew what they were doing. Health and safety… It was commonsense: proper signage, flashing amber lights and clear barriers, not thousands of cones surrounding a single spade.
They didn’t need consultants to tell them how to do the work, because they were the experts. Labourers, sure, but masters of their trade. They laid hot mix and tar, sourced locally first from the gas works, then later from Marsden Point. It was affordable, high-quality stuff, and it stayed put. Roads were sealed smooth: no bumps, no lumpy patchwork quilts and no drains poking out mid-lane like booby traps.
And here’s the kicker: their work actually lasted. Asphalt held for at least five years, sometimes longer, before resealing was even needed. The roads weren’t permanent construction sites back then. And because these guys lived locally, they knew exactly where the trouble spots were. Storm coming? They’d be out prepping the worst drains before they flooded. Proactive, not reactive. Efficient, not performative.
All done on fair wages that didn’t drive councils into the red.
Now… Welcome to the PPP circus. Everything is outsourced. The ‘profit’ is consulted first, then the work begins. The job itself is incidental to the invoice. Four men watching a pothole while billing $15,000 a day, because that’s the going rate when the system values risk-paperwork more than results.
Enter the ‘road-cone hotline’. Apparently, we’ll solve decades of rorting with a phone number.
Let’s be honest: this is a band aid on a broken leg. The contractors aren’t just entrenched – they are the system now. Councils gutted their own teams years ago and are now completely dependent on these corporate tick farms. Traffic safety auditors, contractors, consultants… half of them are working for the same networks and they all sniff around the same public money trough.
Sure, the minister might delete a few dusty PDFs from WorkSafe’s website and call it a win, but nothing changes until we rebuild from the ground up. That means scrapping the PPP model, ending the culture of consultancy first, re-establishing in-house council crews and holding these padded contracts up to real scrutiny.
But don’t hold your breath, because, being real, too many of the decision makers have mates in the mix. This is New Zealand, after all, where Richard Prebble once reckoned 100,000 people had free rental phones thanks to mates-of-mates in the Post Office. Some things never change: the networks just moved from telegraphs to traffic cones, with the road-cone factory conveniently based up in Auckland.
So ring the hotline if it makes you feel better. Just don’t expect the cone cartel to fold anytime soon. There’s still plenty of gold in them hills and the taxpayer tap’s still flowing...
