About the register

How this register is built

Five rules, a classification keyed to the built asset, and an explicit list of things this register will not do.

Five rules of entry

Quoted, not derived. Every dollar figure appears as its source states it, with the publisher, date and a link.
Gaps are named. Where no official figure exists the entry reads "not published". A blank means not yet researched. The two are different and are never merged.
Arithmetic is shown. Per-person and per-household conversions are plain division by published denominators, labelled as arithmetic, never as an estimate.
Benefits are entered too. Each entry carries the published benefit-cost ratio and any measured benefit. A register that recorded only costs would be arguing that nothing should ever be built.
Variance is measured against a like estimate. Comparing an outturn cost to a point-of-entry screening figure is not evidence of overrun.

Why the asset is the key, not the policy

Policies are repealed, renamed and made optional — the medium-density rules changed three times in five years. The asset outlasts all of it: a road that is built stays measurable for decades, and its traffic can be compared to what the business case promised. So each record is keyed to the thing that was built, and the policy instrument is recorded as one attribute among several.

Classification is faceted rather than nested, which is what ISO 12006-2 actually specifies: parallel tables, each classifying the same object from a different view. Where a published table exists this register uses it — Uniclass for entities and systems, NZTA's One Network Framework for network role, NZTA work categories for the activity funded, SM014 and the BCIS elemental form for cost breakdown. A table is invented only where nothing is published.

What this register deliberately does not do

It does not score decisions or assign blame. The accountability section records two things only: what an audit, inquiry or official review formally found, and what consequence is on the public record. Both come from documents. Nothing is rated, and no percentage of fault is assigned to anyone, because the available evidence does not support doing so.

It does not describe any of this as corruption. Corruption means private gain. No person is recorded here as having personally profited from any decision. What the evidence shows is diffuse accountability: costs spread thin enough that nobody is harmed enough to pursue them, while a decision-maker's maximum exposure is losing an election. That is a problem with the rules, and it has answers in the rules.

It does not add unlike figures together. A sunk cost, a capital cost and a recurring annual cost are recorded in separate classes and are not summed into a headline number, because the result would not mean anything.

Sources, and how they are rated

Official documents first: the Treasury, the Auditor-General, NZTA, the Ministry of Transport, MBIE, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, agency annual reports, and documents released under the Official Information Act. Peer-reviewed research where it exists. Media reporting only where it carries an official figure, and marked as such.

Where two sources conflict, both are shown and the primary one is named. Where a widely repeated figure cannot be reconciled with its own arithmetic, it is marked do not rely on this and the reason is given. Two figures currently carry that mark.