The Labour coalition government, with the help of Winston Peters, got a plan off the ground to replace the sea horses, doing a deal with the South Koreans to have two built at around $550 million.
It seems like anything that New Zealand touches, there’s always a cost blowout and that got underway - full steam ahead - when Labour was elected in its own right in 2020 and spent like drunken sailors.
The ferry cost blew out to more than three billion bucks, it seems because no one had taken into account that the new, bigger ferries capable of taking trains couldn’t dock on either side of Cook Strait. That’s because the infrastructure for the bigger ferries was inadequate.
So the contract with the South Koreans, who had started building the ships, was scuttled and for the past year we’ve been waiting to hear the coalition Government’s grand plan to keep the country connected.
The parties making up this Government frequently attacked Labour for continually making announcements about announcements.
Well that’s exactly what the Government did with the new phantom ferries yesterday.
They’re forming a new state-owned company in the new year to replace the ageing fleet with a couple of new boats which will be more in the league of Toyota Corollas to the last Government’s “Ferraris”, if you listen to the minister who cancelled the last contract, Nicola Willis.
How anyone can say that when the new, yet-to-be-formed company in charge of securing the new fleet, presumably can’t have started negotiating yet. And there could be an issue with our credit rating given the way we broke the last contract, meaning we may now be up for the cost of a Lexus.
At least the new company will be able to devote all its time to getting new ferries on the Strait and leave KiwiRail the space to look after the old dungers plying the sea at the moment.
Christopher Luxon was left to defend the indefensible in Parliament to the glee of Labour who created the mess in the first place.
Luxon laid it on with the trowel, declaring he was “very proud to be announcing an incredibly fantastic and credible plan to have a resilient and reliable crossing on the Cook Strait.”
What the plan is though we will just have to wait and see.
But no worries - at the helm will be the old fire stoker himself Winston Peters, the first Minister of Rail in almost 30 years since his old flatmate Philip Burdon relinquished the job when he retired in 1996.
Peters has had a long association with the ferries, with claims from him in the past that they’ve scraped their bum on the seabed, one of their propellors connected with a wharf and of course that they’d recently gone for a cup of coffee when the autopilot glided the ferry to a soft landing on a beach.
The New Zealand First leader has in the past insisted the new ferries should be capable of carrying trains. The Ferraris were capable of doing that, but it’s doubtful the Corollas would have enough grunt.
In the end it will all come down to quality and cost. Peters has declared this is not his first rodeo and it seems we’re being taken along for the ride. We have no choice.
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