Cook Strait ferries: A second summer and still no solution - Arena Williams, Labour MP

THREE KEY FACTS

A year on, I don’t think any of us expected to head into a second summer with no certainty as to the future of our Interislander ferries.

New Zealand is without a reliable Cook Strait connection because Nicola Willis scrapped the existing contract with a South Korean dockyard in the first few weeks after the National-NZ First-Act Government was formed.

We have never had a Minister of Finance take a $500 million gamble and come away with nothing like she has.

Winston Peters stated some weeks ago that a decision was imminent. Even so, the Government is facing an uphill battle in convincing New Zealanders that this decision is a good one.

It is not enough to simply announce that a new plan will cost us less upfront. The Government needs to be clear what we are getting for that money. It is broadly accepted, including by KiwiRail bosses under questions from Labour’s transport spokesman Tangi Utikere and I last week, that the cancelled ferry contract represented very good value for money.

The reality we’re faced with now are lower-quality ships, a worse contract than the one scrapped, and hiked costs with settling the contract – all of which result in future generations paying the price. A consequence of our Finance Minister’s reckless decision-making.

When we consider our rail infrastructure, if the new ferries are not rail-enabled, this will mean higher costs for ports and councils who will need to invest in offloading cargo before reaching the ferries. And, it’s not just them, freight users and consumers will also likely have to bear the brunt of higher costs.

What we need to see is a ferry replacement decision that is part of a wider plan for greater investment in our rail network, and which will support economic opportunity and greater resilience within our regions. But achieving this will require NZ First to push National toward a position of long-term investment, something that seems a stretch given its track record in Government to date.

The freight and tourism sectors who rely on rail and reliable ferries can only hope that NZ First keeps the pressure on where it matters instead of settling for ministerial promotions in Cabinet.

The final point is to reflect on how New Zealand has ended up in this situation. Ministers were facing a cost escalation, which no one was happy about. But Willis appears to have immediately discarded the option of continuing with the existing contract and has stubbornly refused to reconsider this position. It now appears increasingly likely that there are no better options on the table.

What was needed, for once, was for National to take a long-term view of what New Zealand’s strategic and economic interests required. Instead, their Minister of Finance appears to have been unable to rise above an opportunity to blame Labour for KiwiRail’s situation.

These are ferries that New Zealanders will be reliant on for the coming decades. We need the Government to make the right decision here.

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