Two new diesel-electric ferries emitting 40% less emissions, doubling the car, truck, and passenger capacity and able to carry three times more rail wagons while providing a smoother voyage, costing less than $600 million.
The new Minister for Rail, Winston Peters, needs to go in a plane and see the chairman of Hyundai. Tell the chairman that we will honour the iRex ferry contract.
The South Koreans should understand that politicians have rushes of blood and make hasty decisions. Their President, for six hours, declared martial law.
The cancellation was a huge loss of face for the South Koreans. The cost of reinstating the contract should not be a deal-breaker.
Last year I warned that “Nicola Willis must not let her rage at Labour leaving reckless fiscal hand grenades, like the rail ferry blowout, cloud her judgment”.
I wrote that the problem was not the ferries but dockside.
I am a former Minister of Works. The dockside cost is caused by the earthquake code that is imposing unnecessary costs.
The Christchurch earthquake demonstrated that the movement of the earth means that after a large earthquake, even “earthquake-proof” structures have to be demolished.
In the 1855 Wairarapa earthquake, the land around the ferry terminal lifted 2m and shifted sideways, creating a new Wellington coastline. Driving down piles 70m for the ferry dock won’t stop the harbour from moving.
There is a solution. The Port of Napier has pointed out that Wellington’s container terminal meets the earthquake code and could accommodate both the rail and the Bluebridge ferries.
Never waste a crisis.
This is an opportunity to create a national ports strategy that the shipping lines and logistics sector have called for. It is hugely wasteful for a country of five million to have six container ports.
Container ships are so large that technically one container port could handle all the country’s imports and exports.
Just because Wellington has a wonderful harbour is not a reason to have a container port.
Wellington’s imports and exports could easily be sent by rail to and from Napier’s container port.
The Minister of Transport used to have the power to refuse to allow harbour boards to purchase container cranes.
Like a lot of issues, you will find my fingerprints. When the Minister of Transport I thought it was silly that I decided whether a port should have a container crane. To make rational investment decisions I required every port to be run by a commercial company. Our ports are more efficient, but I did not allow for irrational owners.
The Port of Wellington is owned by the Wellington Regional Council. Worldwide capital cities have the worst local government. Red Ken Livingston was Mayor of London. Wellington City cannot maintain the water pipes. I think it is because capital city residents expect central government to pay.
The Government should issue a national container port strategy. Start by ordering the closure of the Wellington container terminal and requiring Napier Port to pay the cost.
This solves the dockside infrastructure costs.
I am also a former Minister of Railways. Willis told Parliament last year that: “We continue to support rail as a means for transporting freight around New Zealand”.
Peters is correct that for a sustainable railway the ferries must be rail-enabled.
The best study of New Zealand railways was done by the famous American consulting firm, Booz Allen Hamilton. They reported that to make one rail network it is essential that the railway own and manage rail-enabled ferries.
Over short internal island journeys trucks have a competitive advantage. Over longer inter-island journeys, rail has a competitive advantage.
If New Zealand did not have a railway, no Government would build one. But we have got a railway. Rail lines run to every port. Rail runs to the centre of most cities.
These corridors are rail’s value. To duplicate rail’s transport corridors would be extremely difficult and enormously expensive.
If today’s rail freight were transferred to road, it would gridlock the country’s roads and motorways.
It is not the ongoing cost of rail and the ferries that is the issue. It is the cost of not having a viable railway network.
Unless Peters succeeds, National will have cancelled having world-class ferries in addition to cancelling the South Island having a world-class new hospital.
The viability of rail will be destroyed along with National’s claim to be good managers.
