Cook Strait mega-ferry mess puts National back in charge - Audrey Young

OPINION

This is a transcript of Audrey Young’s subscriber-only Premium Politics newsletter. To sign up, click on your profile at nzherald.co.nz and select ‘Newsletters’. For a step-by-step guide, click here.

Welcome to the Politics Briefing. It has been a week of repeal and reveal, and for the first time in the two weeks since Parliament restarted, National has looked firmly in charge. With Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters stealing much of the show in the House, it hasn’t always looked like that.

But Finance Minister Nicola Willis changed that when she revealed that the Government is refusing to fund the budget blowout for portside upgrades in Wellington and Picton to accommodate larger Interislander ferries.

As deputy political editor Thomas Coughlan put it in his report, “the Cook Strait is no stranger to shipping disasters, but it is very rare for a ship to sink before ever having set sail”.

The port upgrades are associated with KiwiRail’s plans for two new mega ferries, which have been commissioned in a $550 million contract in South Korea. The financial penalty for cancelling the build is not known and one of the options will be to finish it and on-sell them. The whole project was initially estimated at $775m in 2018, but when KiwiRail asked for another $1.47 billion this year, it would have taken the total to $2.6b. Just over $435m has already been spent.

Willis has told the KiwiRail board to forget its “Ferrari” plans and to come up with some options more akin to a Toyata Corolla option or possibly a second-hand Tesla. She has laid the blame at the feet of the former Government. It had also rejected the same KiwiRail board request in the month before the election, but that was not made public until Wednesday. As Georgina Campbell says in an overview of the shemozzle, it was a bold move to kill off the project without a Plan B.

If the bad news helped National’s profile and sense of control this week, Labour’s reputation was damaged by a damning report by Auditor-General John Ryan on the management of the $15b NZ Upgrade and Shovel Ready infrastructure programmes.

Under urgency this week, the House repealed Labour’s Fair Pay Agreements law and the Clean Car Discount, otherwise known as the ute tax, and it returned the Reserve Bank from its dual mandate of keeping inflation low and maximum sustainable employment to just focusing on inflation.

Meanwhile, one of Parliament’s gentlemen, former Te Tai Tokerau MP Kelvin Davis, has announced he will retire on Waitangi Day. He will have a valedictory speech next week. There have been nine maiden speeches so far and there will be another four next Tuesday afternoon. Tracey McLelland will return to Parliament as a Labour list MP when Davis retires.

Quote unquote

“The Māori people are a sovereign people, and we have never ceded our sovereignty, we have never abdicated our sovereign authority, and we have never ever left this land” - Te Pāti Māori MP Tākuta Ferris in his maiden speech.

Micro quiz

Which NZ band played the jingle Cruisin’ on the Interislander in the TV ad marking the service’s 60th anniversary? (Answer below.)

Brickbat

Goes to Transport Minister Simeon Brown for not releasing officials’ advice about repealing the Clean Car Discount before the House voted on it, saying he had only seen draft advice. It’s all “draft” advice until it is published.

Bouquet

To Auditor-General John Ryan, who is setting a standard for writing so directly. No need to hunt for meaning between the lines. (He was appointed for seven years in July 2018.)

Latest political news and views

Mega-ferry meltdown: Georgina Campbell explains how KiwiRail’s Cook Strait mega-ferry project unravelled.

Mega-ferry meltdown II: The new Government has acted quickly to effectively kill KiwiRail’s mega-ferries project and pin the blame on the former Government.

Retirement: Senior Labour MP Kelvin Davis is quitting politics and will exit at Waitangi on February 6.

EV repeal: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has been heckled to repay his family’s $8k Tesla subsidy as the coalition Government ditches the Clean Car Discount.

Budget blowouts: Two of the former Government’s infrastructure programmes totalling $15 billion were rushed against the advice of officials, leading to big budget blowouts, Auditor-General John Ryan says.

Opinion: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon was right - he has inherited a recession, writes Liam Dann.

Police conduct: Police used force against protesters that was at times unlawful, excessive or unreasonable during the occupation of Parliament in 2022, the Independent Police Conduct Authority has found.

FPA repeal: Parliament has passed the legislation repealing Fair Pay Agreements through its third reading, under urgency.

Israel-Hamas war: New Zealand has supported a United Nations resolution demanding an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza.

Maiden speeches: Te Pāti Māori’s Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, 21, gave a rousing maiden speech in which she promised to hold to account a Government she says is “attacking” her personally.

Polls: Support for Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has fallen in the first poll since he took office, and NZ First has overtaken Act.

Social welfare policy: Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says she wants to be known as “compassionate” rather than kind in the role.

Protests: Hundreds of protesters descended on Parliament on Wednesday to voice their opposition to the repeal of smokefree and labour laws.

Quiz answer: The Warratahs (extra points for singing it).

Audrey Young is the New Zealand Herald’s senior political correspondent. She was named Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards in 2023, 2020 and 2018.

For more political news and views, listen to On the Tiles, the Herald’s politics podcast.