Cam Slater: Another Day and Another Labour Landmine

Now that someone sensible is looking over our country’s books, we are starting to discover just how large the economic problem that Labour has left us actually is. It’s large and getting larger.

At some point the blame needs to be sheeted home to Grant Robertson; he’s fast gaining the reputation as New Zealand’s worst-ever finance minister.

The rail ferries are another multi-billion dollar landmine left by Robertson’s creative accounting.

The Government has declined KiwiRail’s request for an extra $1.47 billion for portside infrastructure needed for Cook Strait’s new mega-ferries.

KiwiRail says it cannot proceed without further Government funding and its board will now oversee the wind-down of the project and review plans for the Cook Strait connection.

KiwiRail was replacing its increasingly unreliable and ageing Interislander fleet with two new rail-enabled ferries under the Inter-island Resilience Connection project (iReX). The last publicly available cost estimate for the new ferries and the portside infrastructure was $1.45b.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis revealed this afternoon that cost has doubled.

She said KiwiRail had requested an additional $1.47b, a component of which had been agreed to in-principle by the previous Government, to address cost escalations related to harbourside infrastructure.

Willis said the Government has declined the request to contribute the significant additional funding.

”The Government remains committed to a resilient, safe and reliable Cook Strait connection, but the cost of this project has almost quadrupled since 2018 to approximately $3b,” she said.

She said only a fifth of the total cost was now associated with the core project of replacing the ageing three ferries.

“Ministers do not have confidence that there will not be further increases and are concerned about the continued significant cost blowouts and the changing nature of the investment they are being asked to make.

“Furthermore, agreeing to KiwiRail’s request would reduce the Government’s ability to address the cost pressures that are impacting on New Zealanders, fund other essential projects and get the Crown’s books back in order.”

NZ Herald

KiwiRail were just taking the piss. It’s all fine and dandy when it’s not your money that you are spending.

This organisation is a bottomless pit that taxpayers are forced to pour money into. Time to pull the pin on the whole shebang. It’s a dog. Put it down and stop spending insane amounts of money keeping the dog alive.

Maybe Nicola Willis could hire Michael Wood? I hear he’s not overly busy right now, and he can put together a massive project to build a cycle bridge over Cook Strait.

Cam Slater is a New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. Cam blogs regularly on the BFD - where this article was sourced.