They weren't going to magically stop with a change of government.
Stuff helpfully put together, it was in the Sunday Star Times, a brief history of the recent issues besetting the Cook Strait ferries. 1998, the Aratere was built in Spain. It cost $106 million at the time, which would have been a bargain if it had worked. But within a year of its delivery, the crew dubbed it El Lemon.
Power failures bring the Aratere to a standstill in 1999, in February and in May. In September, smoke in the engine room sent 250 passengers and 40 crew to the emergency stations. 2000: a life raft falls off while docked in Wellington, December, it blows a piston. 2004: the passengers on the Aratere have a nightmare 8-hour journey from Picton to Wellington because the ship broke down in mountainous seas. 2006: the Aratere rammed a trawler in high winds in July, while berthing in Wellington Harbour.
In February, the Arahura loses power while in Wellington Harbour with 200 passengers on board. In 2011, the Aratere sails for Singapore for a $54 million refit. Returns behind schedule with rats on board. Really, rats on board are the least of your problems.
On November 7, 2011, all three Interislander ferries were out of action at once. 2013: Aratere loses one of its propellers in the Cook Strait, putting it out of action for the busy summer season. 2023: the Kaitaki lost power and drifted towards rocks in Wellington in January. Two harbour tugs raced to the rescue but would have been almost powerless to help as the Capital had got rid of tugs with open water salvage capability, and thus it goes.
We need new ferries. And we need new ferries that work, do the job, are fit-for-purpose, and fit for our seas. The previous government had agreed to new ferries. In fact, the Hyundai Mipo Dockyard was already sort of getting rivets and things under way, whatever you do to build a ferry, but the coalition government declined to fund them, or more specifically, the harbourside infrastructure that needed upgrading.
And they decided not to fund that because costs were blowing out, and blowing out and blowing out. The cost of the project had quadrupled since 2018 to approximately $3 billion and only 21% of those costs were associated with the core project of replacing the ferries.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis famously said that KiwiRail was effectively paying for a Ferrari and now we're going to go off and see whether there are any good, reliable Toyota Corolla’s available to cut costs.
Turns out there aren't that many good, reliable Toyota Corolla’s that are fit for purpose. It appears the government effectively called KiwiRail's bluff. KiwiRail, said, well, we need the money because otherwise the new ferries that we've got under order won't be able to dock. And the government said no, you can't have any more. The costs have blown out and we just don't trust that they're going to stay.
KiwiRail was also given, effectively, a dressing down by Transport Minister Simeon Brown last week, who must be wondering, surely there were other things I could have done when I got out of university rather than go into politics. What with the pylon and the transport and now the ferries.
But Simeon Brown said he was highly unimpressed with how KiwiRail was maintaining its fleet. They have in recent months been improving their maintenance protocols significantly than they have in the last few years. Because they understand the importance of having well-maintained Cook Strait ferries, which has not been the case in the last few years.
In June of last year, two ferries were down as one had a gearbox issue and another was being maintained. So, he's put it right back on to KiwiRail. In fact, the coalition government’s put it all on KiwiRail and said, “No, your costs were ridiculous, as is the infrastructure for the Wellington and Picton ports and you weren't looking after them properly – your fault.”
All well and good, but what do we do now? We really do need safe, reliable transport across Cook Strait. Lives are being imperilled. Surely it is only a matter of time before lives are lost.
We've got tourists and we've got trade and we've got exports that need to get to market. But what I really want to know too, is how do you get cost projections so wrong? Is it really just Covid? I mean, we heard about the supply chain delays and we heard about the cost increases. Can a project really quadruple in cost in the space of four years, because of Covid?
Or is it that the billions of dollars spent on consultants over the past six years has been money really poorly spent? How do you how do you in the private sector allow for cost overruns? Is that just the way business works? I would really love to know.
And I'd really love to know, for those of you who use the ferries, what do you think needs to be done? Do we need brand new, flash, fit-for-purpose ferries that understand the Cook Strait, or can we just keep cobbling on with these ones?
It would appear not, and it looks like the Aratere was a lemon from the time it arrived.
What do we need to keep State Highway 1, the length and breadth of the country running?
Kerre McIvor, is a journalist, radio presenter, author and columnist. Currently hosts the Kerre Woodham mornings show on Newstalk ZB - where this article was sourced.
In February, the Arahura loses power while in Wellington Harbour with 200 passengers on board. In 2011, the Aratere sails for Singapore for a $54 million refit. Returns behind schedule with rats on board. Really, rats on board are the least of your problems.
On November 7, 2011, all three Interislander ferries were out of action at once. 2013: Aratere loses one of its propellers in the Cook Strait, putting it out of action for the busy summer season. 2023: the Kaitaki lost power and drifted towards rocks in Wellington in January. Two harbour tugs raced to the rescue but would have been almost powerless to help as the Capital had got rid of tugs with open water salvage capability, and thus it goes.
We need new ferries. And we need new ferries that work, do the job, are fit-for-purpose, and fit for our seas. The previous government had agreed to new ferries. In fact, the Hyundai Mipo Dockyard was already sort of getting rivets and things under way, whatever you do to build a ferry, but the coalition government declined to fund them, or more specifically, the harbourside infrastructure that needed upgrading.
And they decided not to fund that because costs were blowing out, and blowing out and blowing out. The cost of the project had quadrupled since 2018 to approximately $3 billion and only 21% of those costs were associated with the core project of replacing the ferries.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis famously said that KiwiRail was effectively paying for a Ferrari and now we're going to go off and see whether there are any good, reliable Toyota Corolla’s available to cut costs.
Turns out there aren't that many good, reliable Toyota Corolla’s that are fit for purpose. It appears the government effectively called KiwiRail's bluff. KiwiRail, said, well, we need the money because otherwise the new ferries that we've got under order won't be able to dock. And the government said no, you can't have any more. The costs have blown out and we just don't trust that they're going to stay.
KiwiRail was also given, effectively, a dressing down by Transport Minister Simeon Brown last week, who must be wondering, surely there were other things I could have done when I got out of university rather than go into politics. What with the pylon and the transport and now the ferries.
But Simeon Brown said he was highly unimpressed with how KiwiRail was maintaining its fleet. They have in recent months been improving their maintenance protocols significantly than they have in the last few years. Because they understand the importance of having well-maintained Cook Strait ferries, which has not been the case in the last few years.
In June of last year, two ferries were down as one had a gearbox issue and another was being maintained. So, he's put it right back on to KiwiRail. In fact, the coalition government’s put it all on KiwiRail and said, “No, your costs were ridiculous, as is the infrastructure for the Wellington and Picton ports and you weren't looking after them properly – your fault.”
All well and good, but what do we do now? We really do need safe, reliable transport across Cook Strait. Lives are being imperilled. Surely it is only a matter of time before lives are lost.
We've got tourists and we've got trade and we've got exports that need to get to market. But what I really want to know too, is how do you get cost projections so wrong? Is it really just Covid? I mean, we heard about the supply chain delays and we heard about the cost increases. Can a project really quadruple in cost in the space of four years, because of Covid?
Or is it that the billions of dollars spent on consultants over the past six years has been money really poorly spent? How do you how do you in the private sector allow for cost overruns? Is that just the way business works? I would really love to know.
And I'd really love to know, for those of you who use the ferries, what do you think needs to be done? Do we need brand new, flash, fit-for-purpose ferries that understand the Cook Strait, or can we just keep cobbling on with these ones?
It would appear not, and it looks like the Aratere was a lemon from the time it arrived.
What do we need to keep State Highway 1, the length and breadth of the country running?
Kerre McIvor, is a journalist, radio presenter, author and columnist. Currently hosts the Kerre Woodham mornings show on Newstalk ZB - where this article was sourced.
2 comments:
Kiwirail signed the fixed price contract to build the ships before they even had the approved Government budget. They were stoked at the cheap price and boxed the Government into the purchase... all before even thinking seriously about the wharf upgrades.
They laughed as steel and costs went up. They tried to convince the local councils to pay for the terminals.
It was all cowboy stuff.
Why do we need the strait ferry. Wellington is sitting over a fault line, so one day the port will be unusable for the foreseeable future. The majority of the freight is from Auckland, going to Christchurch. The big shipping compare losing interest in going anywhere but Auckland or Tauranga. So why not get some coastal shipping going. Whangarei, Auckland, Tauranga, Gisborne, Napier, Christchurch, Dunedin. A system that can easily bypass our dodgy roads when they break again.
Just don't allow the seaman's union of old resurface.
Post a Comment