Your Daily Ten@10 - 2026/034

This is edition 2026/034 of the Ten@10 newsletter.

Hi all,

This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media.

Enjoy!

• 🏗️ New Zealand’s first National Infrastructure Plan has sparked headlines about failing assets, but Danyl McLauchlan argues the real story is how PR-driven politics has hollowed out serious governing.
• 📣 McLauchlan traces the problem to Alastair Campbell under Tony Blair, where the “comms grid” turned politics into a schedule of media-friendly “announceables,” with policy substance coming second.
• 🎭 In this model, governments focus on optics — hard hats, ribbon cuttings, staged visits — while core questions (“Will it work? What will it cost?”) sit downstream from the announcement.
• 🇳🇿 McLauchlan says New Zealand imported this system wholesale, with leaders like Jacinda Ardern mastering the art of pre-announcements and media cycles heavy on symbolism but light on follow-through.
• 💸 The current government under Christopher Luxon is portrayed as no different, using subsidies and splashy event funding as purchasable “announceables,” where the photo-op precedes the business case.
• 🌾 Shane Jones Provincial Growth Fund is cited as an example: risky loans and defaults matter less in a comms-driven system than the favourable headlines generated during regional tours.
• 📊 The Infrastructure Commission’s report reveals systemic failure: nearly half of recent projects lacked full business cases, 11,925 projects sit in the pipeline worth $275b, and $193b is unfunded — yet already announced.
• 💰 Despite spending about 5.8% of GDP on infrastructure — among the highest in the OECD — New Zealand ranks poorly on value for money and asset management: “we spend the most but get the least.”
• 🔧 The Commission urges that 60 cents of every dollar go to maintenance and renewals — unglamorous work like fixing roofs, pipes and hospitals — but such projects are politically unattractive because they aren’t “announceable.”
• 📉 McLauchlan argues grid politics no longer even works electorally: voters have grown cynical after years of broken promises, cancellations and cost blowouts.
• 🏛️ The rise of communications professionals inside the Beehive — far more numerous than in the days of Keith Holyoake — has shifted power from policy experts to spin doctors managing the 24-hour news cycle.
• 🌊 Wellington’s own troubled mega-projects, including the Town Hall rebuild and the Tākina Wellington Convention and Exhibition Centre, symbolise how “new and shiny” projects have crowded out basic maintenance.
• ⚠️ Ultimately, McLauchlan frames the infrastructure crisis as a democracy crisis: when announcements trump delivery, public trust erodes and reality eventually catches up.
• 🔄 His conclusion: unless governments break free from the comms grid and prioritise long-term maintenance over media theatre, the Infrastructure Plan itself will become just another announcement — briefly hyped, then forgotten.