State of our roads.

[harm_less]

Move more tonnage by rail, reduce the amount of trucks on our roads.
The last time I was in Sydney I caught a bus from my daughters place to the airport and all the time I kept hearing a dull thud thud thud and I thought the bus had a flat tire but it was the road we were on, it was made of concrete and the thud I could here was the bus going over different sections, I asked why was the road made of concrete and the answer was it was cheaper to maintain if anything went wrong, maybe we should look at something like that here.

Concrete has no flexibility so cannot cope with soft subgrades as is often the case in New Zealand, especially in those regions with young soils of volcanic origin such as in Taranaki. Failure of concrete roads results in large slabs subsiding so a far more dangerous situation than potholed chipseal/asphalt road surfaces laid on compacted gravel. Constructing roads with sufficient depth of gravel to support concrete sufficiently is just prohibitively expensive. https://www.nzta.govt.nz/roads-and-rail/...pavements/

Australian geology is more ancient and very different to ours with bedrock often being relatively shallow, a condition that contributes to their frequent flash flood events due to heavy rain not being able to penetrate strata and so running off.